


Small Sacrifices

by ELG



Category: X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rape, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-04
Updated: 2013-04-04
Packaged: 2017-12-07 11:58:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>NEW. (Written April 2013) Not wanting to admit that he may have feelings for Scott, Logan conceals his affection for him behind a brief sexual interlude in the showers. When they run into Magneto, Toad, and Sabretooth, the morning after, Logan has no way of remembering that Victor Creed has decades of conflicted feelings to deal with where Logan is concerned – and that Scott now smells like something that belongs to Logan.</p><p>WARNINGS: Somewhat ROUGH SEX (Logan and Scott) and GRAPHIC M/M RAPE (of Scott by Sabretooth, witnessed by Logan), also some violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Sacrifices

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in some indeterminate AU end of X1-beginning of X2 place, with foreshadowing of the mutant 'vaccine' plot in X3, and assumes reader knowledge of both X-Men: First Class (and that version of how Charles Xavier ended up in the wheelchair) and the Wolverine: Origins version of the Logan and Victor backstory.  
> SHIPS: Jean Grey/Scott Summers, Logan/Scott Summers, also mentions Logan and Jean having feelings and sexual attraction towards one another, and pretty much assumes that Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier is canon, although they don't really interact in this fic so am not putting it as a tag.

> We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.  
>  Eric Hoffer

There was only so long that even Logan could go on sidestepping the bad memories that _weren't_ buried beyond recall, and today's argument with Rogue had made a recent one claw its way into the light. There was nothing like uneasy guilt for making him resentful.

_Logan, you were lying on the hood of the burning truck and I was trapped in the burning truck, with that Sabretooth guy coming for us, and did I mention that the truck was burning…? And then they show up. Storm controls the snow and Scott uses his optic blasts, and between them they scare off Sabretooth, free me, pull you off the hood of the burning truck to safety – and it looked like you were heavy, by the way, I'm surprised you didn't give Scott a hernia…._

_Yeah, thanks for that, kid. I get it. They were cool mutant super-heroes._

_They saved our lives, Logan!_

_They didn't save mine. I've got the healing factor, remember?_

_I'm still thinking you'd prefer not to be lying on the hood of a burning truck when it exploded. Or to be Sabretooth's prisoner – because that guy is terrifying._

_And…?_

_And would it have killed you to say 'Thank you'?_

Yeah, Rogue, it would have killed him to say 'thank you' to that preppy _boy_ in red sunglasses, standing there in the doorway, looking past him to the Professor with that 'Am I allowed to retaliate now?' look on his face as if Logan couldn't have tossed the smug little shit out of the window any time he wanted to. And, okay, Logan had impulse control issues, and he could, perhaps, have been less of a dick to Laser Beam Eyes, but he really didn't appreciate people yapping at him about how he'd been _mean_ to poor, virtuous Scott Summers. What's more, it was never going to work out like they hoped – well, not unless what they wanted out of the experience was to make Logan want to needle the guy some more. But, apparently, in Mutant School, even some perfectly reasonable irrational dislike of a younger, taller, better-looking guy, who was – not at all incidentally – involved with the woman to whom Logan could much too easily have given his heart, had to be weighed for hidden meanings.

Professor Xavier had spent way too many years in a love-hate relationship with Magneto not to view everything from a warped perspective. (And did he have to drag that guy's name into _every_ conversation? Sometimes it felt like 'Erik' was less of an archenemy and more of a High School crush.) Clearly, the Professor and Magneto had more than just enmity going on, but sometimes when a guy didn't like another guy maybe it was because he just…didn't like him, but, no, there had been that insidious mind-whisper: _Well, I suppose one way to pull Scott's pigtails in class is to make eyes at his girlfriend, Logan…._ That had not been what it was. There had been no pigtail pulling. He and Cyclops had clashed from their first meeting because Cyclops was annoying and Logan didn't like him. It was as simple as that. Then he'd noticed that the redhead was really hot, and so when it turned out that she was Cyclops' girlfriend, he'd naturally liked Cyclops even less. Cyclops had returned his hostility with his own uptight, too-reined-in-to-admit-to-an-honest-to-God-emotion version, which meant the parts of his face not concealed by a visor making pinched grimaces from time to time while he almost chewed through his own tongue _not_ saying _Fuck you, Logan, you asshole!_

The guy really needed to learn the benefits of just throwing the occasional unrestrained punch. Damnit, even an unrestrained sentence would be a breakthrough.

Logan lived a bare half inch above the primal and it was what kept him strong. He'd been a lone wolf for a long time. Partly because he didn't really possess any company manners any more and partly because if he were given a pack, there was always the worrying possibility that he'd start acting like a pack animal – caring, protecting, self-sacrificing for the weaker cubs. All that crap. Rogue had already done too damned good a job at getting under his skin. With Jean, well, he was calling it hormones until someone could prove that all that light-headed, breath-stealing, heart-thumping in her presence deserved to be defiled by a four-letter word. But Cyclops fitted perfectly into the younger buck/rival-alpha slot. And that was precisely where he needed to stay. 

It would just have helped a little if Cyclops hadn't been so damned vulnerable under his WASPy mutant shell. It was like the guy was a breath away from self-doubt every minute. Not to mention that his awesome mutant powers mostly seemed to involve having to wear a visor or keep his eyes closed to avoid hurting humans or people he cared about. It was useful – sure – that he could punch holes in walls just by looking at them, but it was less useful that his fear of punching holes in things had him screwed down so tight. And the guy had looked so gut-punched when Xavier had been lying there unconscious that Logan's 'I'm sorry' had slipped out before he could claw it back. For a guy whose eyes were usually invisible, Cyclops sure knew how to wear his heart on his sleeve.

Every time he was alone with Cyclops, Logan was torn between wanting to point out all the ways Logan was a better catch than he was – older, stronger, faster, _way_ more experienced in every way; a bona fide grown-up at the moment of his and Jean's first meeting, not some dumb, scrawny kid who'd had a crush on her for years until she took pity on him – and telling him to _lighten up, loosen up, and stop over-thinking every damned thing, you little prick, because you're actually doing a pretty good job._

None of which explained why the thought that had popped into his head when he saw Mystique making for the guy had been: Hands off, bitch! He's _mine!_

That one was a little tougher to work out. He didn't feel like that when Jean was banging the guy – then he was all pissed off with that boy-toy for bedding his girl – but the sight of another Wolverine, claws out, and full of murderous intent, making for _his_ annoying Boy Scout? That had definitely triggered something that felt a lot like possessive rage. Maybe he'd just got to a place with the stupid X-Men and their stupid self-sacrificing heroics, where even though he kind of wanted to smack Cyclops almost all the time, if someone else laid a finger on him in front of him, it made him want to kill them. Maybe it was natural. And, whatever the Professor said, it didn't mean he _liked_ him and it sure as hell didn't have anything to do with wanting to see him naked. 

Except, when it came to the last part, it turned out that Logan kind of did want to see Scott Summers naked – and that was when everything had started to go horribly wrong.

***

Perhaps it was just too easy an association of ideas – Logan going from mentally calling Cyclops an uptight asshole to noticing that his ass looked pretty good in black leather and that – given that he was the Guy Least Likely To Have Ever Experimented In Mutant School – it certainly would be tight. Logan hadn't thought of himself as a natural explorer but there was something that brought out the pioneer in him at the thought of beating a path to that particular virgin territory.

Once the idea lodged itself in Logan's mind, he found he couldn't get rid of it. From then on, every time old One Eye started wittering on at him about teamwork and ethics, it made him want to scratch himself, belch, blow a lot of cigar smoke in that pretty face, ease him over a flat surface, one hand just pressed lightly on the back of his head, every movement slow and steady, and quietly firm, and then find out for himself if Cyclops was as tight as he imagined. He figured that it would probably shut the guy up very effectively – Logan slipping into him, balls deep, by slick, slow inches. He imagined Cyclops doing the fish-mouth thing, shocked into temporary silence, before his sleeping libido finally kicked in and started sending heated, excited signals into his prissy, perfectly-honed, hot, young body – 

Damn! Not the best time for Cyclops to walk into the showers. Not when Logan had already been imagining him naked and sweaty with just a little too much enthusiasm and the evidence was jutting up, wet and eager, for all to see. And there the guy was – peeling off his sweats to reveal lots of taut muscle, slender strength, a waist around which Logan's hands would fit much too comfortably, and that taut little poem of an ass, set just as high and tight as Logan remembered. 

As Cyclops peeled off the last piece of clothing – being a gentleman he had started with his socks – Logan could not stop that low, hungry growl escaping from his throat. 

Cyclops had clearly been thinking about something else because he started like a young gazelle when he noticed Logan there, and Logan found himself thinking that, behind the visor, those blue eyes that he had seen once, when Cyclops's powers were knocked out for a few days, would be all wide and surprised, long lashes fluttering. That made him harder. He suspected that anything to do with Scott Summers would make him hard right now. Frustration could do that to a growing mutant. 

Cyclops said, "Logan…?" tentatively. "Are you…okay?"

Logan guessed he must be looking at him the way hungry bears looked at honeycombs, and that _something_ about his silent, brooding, lust-fogged presence was making Cyclops uncomfortable. 

Logan was ornery enough to enjoy that. He liked it that Cyclops – the Teacher's Pet, Substitute-Daddy's Good Little Soldier, Straight Arrow Boy Scout – was thoroughly nonplussed, and – as the silence stretched and yawned between them and Cyclops's gaze traveled – inevitably – downwards – not a little nervous. 

That was when, instead of answering, Logan growled in a way that would make any sentient mammal, even a mutant with a rose quartz visor shielding his potentially mountain-leveling eyes, freeze instinctively, strode over to where Scott Summers was naked by the showers, just finished with his chaste strip, and shoved him hard against the cubicle, claiming his mouth with a rough kiss. 

"Logan – what the hell…?" It was more of a boyish squeak than a manly complaint and it was music to his ears.

Logan's mouth bruised, his tongue delved, and Cyclops just stood there, dumbly, letting him kiss him again, hard and possessive, Cyclops frozen like an X-Man in headlights. Logan yanked him close by the shoulders, and then, when Cyclops, stayed rigid as an ironing board, mouth open in shock, plunged in deeper with a hungry wolfish tongue, one hand gripping him by that soft, dark hair so he could thoroughly explore his tonsils. There was a whimper that made him harder still, because Cyclops should have punched him by now, or at least shoved him away, demanding to know what kind of a boy Logan thought he was, but Cyclops seemed too dazed to do anything but let himself be boarded and plundered like a merchant ship. He was swaying, and when Logan hauled him around and shoved him back against a tiled hard surface, he thumped against the wall, unresisting, slack-jawed with confusion. Logan realized that all those supervillains who'd been smacking Cyclops around since puberty couldn't have got around to threatening his virtue, because it had clearly never occurred to Scott Summers that any guy might want to stick his tongue down his throat and make a valiant attempt to Hoover out his lungs.

Perhaps it was just the novelty of it, but Logan thought there was more behind this shock than simple surprise. Cyclops was making small, bewildered noises and it was his own reaction that seemed to be bewildering him. _Why is this guy doing this to me?_ was definitely accompanied by an underlying _And why in God's name am I _liking_ it?_

Logan pulled back, licking his lips to remind them both of what he'd just been tasting, gazing straight into that eye-shielding visor, so Cyclops couldn't look away. "Sometimes, what a guy needs when he's had too much of being the leader, is to let someone else take charge. You gonna let me take charge? Right here? Right now? No arguments. Just do what you're told when I tell you to do it?"

And that was desire – he could smell it. Shame and confusion and desire, because Cyclops hadn't even known he wanted Logan to go all masterful with him until right this second, and he was embarrassed as hell about it. If Cyclops started thinking, he'd run a mile and then probably wear a hair shirt for a month. Even the thought of all that possible self-flagellation, made Logan irritable. He took Cyclops by the arm and propelled him forcibly into the shower cubicle, saying, "None of that, okay? I don't want to hear any of it. I just want you – for once in your uptight asshole life – to shut up and do what I tell you."

He hit the shower spray and the warm water poured over them, slick and eager, like it couldn't wait for them to get started. Cyclops got a mouthful and spat it out, almost drowning in his dazed state, until Logan hauled him out of the direct flow before he just went on swallowing shower water and spluttering. 

As Logan shoved him – quite gently – against the tiled back wall, he could feel a tenderness trying to break through that had no business being in this shower with them. Scott was looking to him for reassurance, looking painfully young and five fathoms out of his depth, and it was all Logan could do not to tell him to trust him – but that wasn't this. This wasn't going to turn into some complicated business of him making Cyclops feel better – and warmth and new understanding flowering between them. This was about Cyclops shutting up for once and doing what Logan told him, and enjoying not being the guy in charge, and Logan enjoying being the one on top – and neither of them ever talking about it until the next time the itch between them became so insistent that it needed to be scratched. This was not about being nice.

The fact that what Logan really wanted to do most right now was kiss Scott Summer's sculpted mouth with gentle, teasing pressure and tell him that he mattered, that Logan cared, and wanted nothing more than to keep him safe, was neither here nor there. 

Growling at that inner voice that wanted him to woo a boy called Scott with goddamn sonnets and shower him with rose petals, and, incidentally, growling aloud at Cyclops in the process, Logan ground out, "So, tough guy, do you want it rough or rougher?"

Cyclops said again faintly, "Logan – what the hell…?"

It wasn't an unreasonable question under the circumstances, but Cyclops was sweet and sweat-beaded with the scent of arousal and confusion and…submission. The last scent was even more irresistible than the others, and it was making Logan's erection throb all the harder to realize that the more primal he became, the less able Cyclops was to either manage or resist him. Being trapped in a confined space with Logan in full on lustful Wolverine-mode was bypassing every logic circuit in Cyclops's over-active brain and tapping straight into his instincts. Because it turned out that every cool, calm, collected, alpha male, leadership-bearing part of Scott Summers was just the armor careful nurturing and careful training had welded onto what had once been a scared kid, blinded by his own mutation and all alone in a world he could atomize with a careless glance, who just wanted someone else to come along and take charge.

 _Meaning someone else could have got here first, if that someone had only worked out that, if he pressed the right buttons, Cyclops was there for the taking._

That made everything spike. His claws came out and gouged chips from the tiles as Cyclops jumped, and the pain of metal ripping through his skin made Logan even harder as he dived in angrily, yanking those claws back in a millisecond before he grabbed Cyclops by the shoulders again and pulled him in for another bruising kiss, before spinning him around and slamming him face-first against the tiled back wall. He could hear Cyclops' heart pounding over the steamy gush of the shower spray, scared and excited, because he was trapped, naked, in a wet cubicle with an adamantium-clawed naked maniac whom, on some instinctive level he had never examined, he absolutely trusted.

Logan licked his neck hungrily, making Cyclops shiver with longing, mouthed his shoulder blades, traced the ridges of his spine, feeling the bump-bump of those sharp bones beneath his fingertips, thinking how fragile a thing the human skeleton was when it wasn't metal-bonded. Cyclops was all lean strength and defined muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere, taut and honed and slender and firm and _so damned young_. He was quivering under Logan's touch, trying to keep control while his erogenous zones hummed like violin strings and everything in him yearned to just let go. Logan was inhaling him like candy, licking and nipping, loving the taste and scent of him as he mouthed his way down his spine, and traced the curve of his ribcage before he remembered that this wasn't that – no soppy stuff needed, not between two rivals for the same woman's love. As Cyclops got to have Jean, Cyclops could do without the sweet talk. He could do without the goddamned foreplay, too.

That was when Logan pulled the shower head off the wall and aimed it where it would do the most good, and Cyclops made a stifled, shamed sound of pleasure as the hot spray did its work. When Logan added shower gel and one slicked finger, Cyclops went up onto his toes, trying to pull away. Logan punished him with two fingers, thrust to the second joint, and Cyclops clawed at the wall in his turn, trying to grip onto the scarred tile-work, like his world was still upright someplace if only he could find it. He was opening and closing his mouth, and perhaps those noises he wasn't making were soundless protests, but his body was giving way with shameless speed, Cyclops going warm and yielding under Logan's exploring fingers, like well-worked clay. He pressed his head against the shower tiles harder and made small noises of toe-curled, shameful pleasure, and Logan just knew Cyclops had his eyes closed up tight, and that if Logan just turned his head and kissed him, gently, on the mouth, like he wanted to, Cyclops would open his eyes behind that visor and look at him and everything would be okay.

The thought of how much he wanted to do that – how much he was hungering to explore his mouth with gentle, teasing kisses, to whisper reassuring words, to press their foreheads against one another so he could breathe the kid in and Cyclops could see for himself how much Logan – 

Angry, Logan slid his fingers in deeper and harder, just wanting to get this damned party started, and Cyclops made a shocked sound that was nothing like 'No!' He was clinging to the shower wall like it was a mast on a ship wallowing in high seas as the fingers were scissored roughly – making him choke down something that sounded suspiciously like a whimper – then pulled out of him, and Logan gripped him by the hips, licked up his spine, and pressed in, leaking and urgent. Then Logan was on the brink of delicious heat and tightness and Cyclops was offering gasps, and more soft, shocked whimpers that made Logan want to bite down hard and mark him for all to see. 

He pushed in deeper and Cyclops cried out, like it hurt more than he could bear and he would die if it stopped, and Logan slammed into him all the way to the root, like he was all primal rage and was going to take him apart like a nail bomb. Cyclops moaned, and Logan kissed him, quick and tender on the neck, inhaling him before he could stop himself, pain scent and that warm, willing confusion, as Cyclops half-turned, seeking his comfort. His fingers were treacherous and stroked gently through that soft dark hair as he choked down something that _wasn't_ a sob and rubbed his rough stubble across Summer's shaved jaw to reassure him, just once. 

He had to force his fingers to clench, to pull his head back by those wet locks, as he thrust, much more carefully than he would ever want Cyclops to know, keeping it shallow until he had worked him skillfully through the first pain, then using deeper, harder strokes, driving into him, straight and careful. Cyclops was reeling from a sensory chaos of stretching pain, red heat, prostate starbursts of pleasure, and the jolt-jolt-jolt of being taken, over and over, bruisingly deep, while those rising lightning strikes climbing up his spine sent shivering fire through his nerve ends.

Logan could feel every stumbling reaction to this confusion of sensations, like he was experiencing it all himself, wincing from the stretching pain, and gasping with the shock of the pleasure, and _nothing making sense because he shouldn't be liking this, why was he liking this?_ and the thump-thump of his heart, and the choked down cries, and the rapid, panting breaths, fingers scrabbling at tiles, and yearning-yearning-yearning towards the hard, muscular body claiming his, aching for some tenderness. Cyclops came with a bewildered cry that hurt Logan to hear, and Logan pinned him against the shower wall and pounded him with breath-stealing speed, body slam after body slam, gripping his arms hard enough to leave bruises as he came with a guttural, animal snarl. He pulled out fast enough to make him yelp then caught Cyclops under the arms when he would have fallen, and for a moment he was holding him close, his scent was all over him, and his mouth was brushing his hair before he could stop himself, eyes closing as he breathed him in with longing, propping him against the tiled wall so his fingers, unbidden, could gently stroke his back, soothing him, like he was a nervous colt, while Cyclops gasped for breath. 

There was a long, shower-sprayed pause before Cyclops, fingers digging into the tiles, keeping his head averted – and probably his eyes tightly closed, said breathlessly, "Logan, what just happened?"

Logan made sure Cyclops could support his own weight before he took a step backwards. "It's called sex, Bub. Try to keep up."

That was when Cyclops flashed him a look over his shoulder, face far too vulnerable. Logan could only give thanks he couldn't see his eyes because he just knew they'd be all confused and heartrendingly unguarded. "What does it mean?"

Logan said, "Not a damned thing."

That was when he walked out, picked up his clothes, and left Cyclops to put himself back together again as best he could.

 

Objectively, Logan didn't think he'd ever seen the Professor that angry before. The guy was waiting for him in the corridor, all the paneling standing to attention, fingers gripping his wheels until the knuckles were white, and his blue eyes ablaze. He said tautly, "My office. Now."

Logan did his best to saunter insouciantly, like his conscience wasn't jumping like a bug on a griddle. Like he was perfectly comfortable in his skin.

As the door closed, the Professor said, "You crossed the line, Logan."

"I walked it. No crossing involved."

"The fact remains that you are far stronger than Scott. You both know you could kill him with those claws if you wanted to."

Logan said, "Don't try to shine up Golden Boy's rep by pretending he wasn't willing. He was willing as hell. Maybe what _you_ don't want to admit is that your Boy Scout gave it up without a whimper to the first guy who asked for it."

"No, Logan!" And his voice was a whiplash. "He 'gave it up' to _you_! And you didn't ask. You just took."

"He was willing!"

"I'm not disputing that both you and Scott believe him to have offered some form of consent." 

He wondered if the Professor had visited Cyclops's mind to check, and what his reaction would have been if Cyclops had even suggested that what Logan had done to him had been against his will. Logan suspected that in the first flare of his protective rage, the Professor would have taken his mind apart like entrails. 

The anger he could deal with – he was used to anger – but the disappointment was hard to hear. The Professor spoke wearily, "Logan, I understand that you're very conflicted right now – that you have feelings for Jean and that you resent Scott's role both as her boyfriend and as the leader of the X-Men, but couldn't you have worked through your issues in a way that was a little less…cruel?"

The word got through his armor like a stiletto. It was an effort to rally. "I wasn't…punishing him."

"Weren't you?" Professor X looked very tired. "Because it seemed to me to be a most effective way of hurting him for daring to make you care about him somewhat more than you are ready to admit."

"Look – I haven't gotten any in a while. Cyke was there and he was naked – and he may be an uptight dick, but, if you don't mind em preppy, he cleans up nice. I had a moment of weakness – simple as that."

"Did it really frighten you that badly to have another human being dare to believe that you had his back?"

"The kid needs to grow up," Logan growled shortly. "You've been feeding him too many fairytales. Sometimes, a frog isn't a prince and a beast isn't a good-hearted genius or a rough diamond with a heart of gold, he's just a beast, and sometimes if Little Red Crystal Visor takes the wrong path through the woods he's gonna get eaten by the wolf. If it wasn't me it would have been someone else."

He turned on his heel and walked out.

***

 

Logan was getting a little tired of Charles Xavier wanting to teach him yet another Important Lesson About Life. Because why else would the guy have sent him and Cyclops off on a reconnaissance mission together on the Morning After?

He had expected Cyclops to be on his dignity with him, all clipped diction and giving him orders to show nothing had changed, but he'd knocked the stuffing out of him too effectively for him to bounce back that fast. When he came down to breakfast the next day, Cyclops was in the kitchen, but when Logan tried to stare him down all he got was his head averted, Cyclops suddenly finding the kids' breakfast cereal fascinating, quietly suggesting to Bobby that the milk might pour better if it wasn't frozen, that John's egg was going to be inedible if he didn't stop hard-boiling it, that maybe Kitty should try sitting on the chair not halfway through the floor. Logan felt a fierce pang because this guy wasn't much past being a kid himself and he'd made himself responsible for these children's lives years back. 

And these kids were smart enough to know that someone had upset Cyclops, the way he was sounding as if he'd fought and lost, the way he tried to find a smile for them but his face muscles couldn't quite manage it with everything locked down. And the thing that _really_ hurt was when Kitty glanced over her shoulder at Logan, looked relieved, and then did that little head tilt in Cyclops' direction just to let Logan know that there was something wrong with Scott and maybe he could help fix it.

Not one of these dumb, trusting, vulnerable children imagining even for an instant that what had hurt Scott was…Logan. 

He tried to throw out a challenging glance, to get the guy to look back at him, in the hope of sparking…something – a yelled accusation, a nice, juicy insult – but Cyclops dropped his head at once and, with a sinking heart, Logan realized that Cyclops wasn't angry, like he should have been; he was guilt-racked and ashamed because Logan had got him to cheat on Jean so easily, for so little. He'd let a guy fuck him who didn't even like him, who hadn't even called him by his real name while he was doing it, but he wasn't blaming Logan for it. Logan was what he was, and Cyclops should have known that, going in. Too late, Logan remembered that this was the difference between him and Cyclops – that the guy turned all his anger inwards. So much for teaching the guy to throw off some shackles. All he'd done was make Cyclops feel cheap and tawdry and a cheater, and the fact that Jean would understand and forgive so readily – probably already had, as it wasn't like Cyclops had the option with her of keeping his feelings a secret – was only making it worse.

Logan really wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him, then yell at him for being dumb enough to buy the act that Logan had been selling. He wanted to say _Trust your instincts, you idiot!_ Even though, hadn't that whole business been about teaching Cyclops not to trust them? Cyclops had spent years thinking of himself as a leader of men, someone who had to carry the burden of responsibility, someone who mustn't ever screw up or people would die and it would be All His Fault, then last night Logan had told him and shown him that all he was and all he ever would be to Logan was a nice piece of ass. Was it so surprising that, having tilted the guy's world view on its axis, Cyclops was looking a little unsteady on his feet this morning? 

_Not to mention that he's probably stiff and sore, you selfish shit, given that you didn't break him in very gently…._

Logan wondered if it would be any consolation at all to Cyclops to know that however much he was inwardly cringing with self-loathing, Logan was cringing more. All those justifications for being a vicious dick sounded nothing but hollow this morning. The guy had trusted Logan to have his back because Logan had shown himself to be the kind of bad-tempered loner who nevertheless shared his core values when it came to the protection of the innocent. He had trusted Logan because his instincts were good, and Logan had pulled that certainty out from under him for no good reason other than resentment because Cyclops had made him care. The Professor had got that, but Cyclops sure as hell wouldn't – not when he could blame himself for poor judgment and easy morals instead.

Cyclops said wearily, like he hurt in a place too deep to ever heal, "Logan, you should probably eat some breakfast. The Professor wants us to follow up on a lead."

Logan was gripped by a horrible fear that Scott might flinch if he got too close to him, the way people did from bad guys. Keeping the table between them, he said, "Any idea what lead?" And his voice was much too gentle. 

Cyclops did flinch then and Logan saw that he had steeled himself to deal with anything – jeering dismissal, sneering innuendo – except Logan being even halfway decent to him. Cyclops momentarily faltered and then clenched one fist tightly, looked intently at the dresser like it was the answer to all the world's problems, and said with steely calm, "It arrived at Hank's lab – some kind of device. It includes symbols no one here has seen before. Hank and Jean are examining it. In the meantime, the Professor wants us to take a look at the laboratory where some of its components came from. The place is supposed to be closed down but he thinks we may be able to find some clues."

Logan kind of wanted to applaud, because Cyclops had done such a good job of looking and sounding a lot like Cyclops all the way through that speech – ramrod straight spine, clear diction, natural leader present and correct.

He said, "Sounds like a good idea to me." He tried to keep every word unweighted.

Cyclops looked at his watch, still not meeting Logan's eye. "Can you be ready in thirty minutes?"

Logan said, "Yes." He tried to make eye contact again, to let him see that he was sorry, but Cyclops turned to the kids.

"Physics with the Professor in fifteen minutes, guys. John, please tell me you did your homework?"

He got it. Logan was everything Cyclops couldn't deal with right now – focus of his buried desires, adulterous guilt, and shattering self-loathing combined – domesticity and routine he could cope with, if he used his fingernails to hang on tight. Logan walked out and left Cyclops to the things that he could still bear to be alone with.

 

Logan waited until they were airborne and the autopilot was engaged before he said, "I'm sorry – about last night."

Cyclops said tautly, "We both know I consented. There's nothing to discuss."

"I'm not apologizing for something I didn't do."

At least that confused Cyclops enough to make him turn his head and finally look at him. "What?"

"I'm not apologizing for forcing you to have sex with me – because, like you say, I didn't. I _am_ apologizing for acting like a pig – because I did." When he added, "I'm sorry if I hurt you," he thought they could both pretend it was only the physical they were discussing.

There was a moment when Cyclops had to swallow hard, then he turned back to the control panel before managing, "It was a heat of the moment thing. We were both to blame. Let's just forget it and move on."

Logan knew he should explain that it had all been an act. That he'd been beating down the tenderness he felt for him every step of the way. But silence was so much easier. He nodded. "It never happened." The words ground out like granite, like a stone door grating into place that could never now be opened again. Inside, Logan felt a tearing pain and thought, viciously, _Serves you right, Logan_.

 

 _Hey, Professor, welcome to Wolverine's report. Things we learned on this mission. Number One:_ Guess what? The gizmo wasn't sent by Magneto. 

Logan just wished they could have learned that a less painful way. 

Cyclops landed the jet neatly in what would once have been the parking lot of a now-abandoned building. The laboratory was in the middle of nowhere; right on the Canadian border, and it smelt an awful lot like a trap. They went in, anyway, striding along a lot of empty corridors past a lot of empty rooms, everything broken, shivers of splintered glass, flapping plastic, dull gleam of chrome. Cyclops found some old letterheads that proved the company that had once worked out of there was called Creed Int. Logan had pointed out that it could just be an anagram for De Cretin – aimed at anyone dumb enough to turn up. Cyclops had crisply called in what they had, and the Professor had said anything associated with anyone called Creed was something he thought Scott should stay far away from for his own good. There had been a definite edge to his voice as he said it.

Cyclops said to Logan, still crisply, "The Professor's concerned the place could be something to do with Graydon Creed, founder of the Friends of Humanity."

"That little pimple."

"He thinks it may be booby-trapped and he suggests that we strategically withdraw as soon as possible."

They had been making their way back to the jet when Logan found he couldn't move. His muscles were straining but nothing was happening. Then everything was agonizing, as his tendons and sinews were trying to fight his own skeleton as he was picked up by his adamantium core and hurled at Cyclops. There had been time for him to yell at the guy to blast him and for Cyclops _not_ to do it – in that one brief window when he could have saved himself from skewering. Cyclops had tried to blast Magneto instead – who had deflected the beam disdainfully with help of a loose girder – just before chains snaked out and wrapped themselves around Cyclops's arms, dragging him back to the metal fence and binding him to it like a sacrifice. Then there had been far too much time for Logan's claws to be pulled out agonizingly, and flexed in warning. Time for him to think – even through the tendon-tearing pain he was in – about how it was going to feel when he was used as the shredding machine that was going to turn Scott Summers to mincemeat, and for him to yell again, panic-stricken now, that Magneto didn't need to do this; that he was supposed to be part of some goddamned mutant brotherhood, wasn't he? Did he call this brotherly?

Magneto's voice was a resonant purr: "Oh, I'd just call it entertaining, myself."

Logan could see Cyclops, chained to the fencing, bracing himself for inevitable skewering death, and wondered if Magneto would at least make it quick or if he was going to use Logan as a tool to slice bits off the guy. He kept yelling, anyway – all the reasons why Magneto didn't want to do this, aware of Sabretooth and Toad watching in amusement, entertained by Logan's dissolving self-control as he was thrown closer and closer to the guy that Magneto was going to make him kill.

His voice was hoarse with desperation by the time his claws were touching the chain-link, and Cyclops was encircled by his straining arms in the parody of an embrace, their bodies pressed in tight, mouths close enough to kiss. Logan could smell Cyclops's fear and the rapid beat of his heart, but all Cyclops said was, "This isn't your fault, Logan."

Logan yelled furiously at Magneto, "I don't know what the hell the Professor sees in you!"

That was when Toad decided to up the amusement ante for himself. His tongue flickered out like a whiplash and plucked the visor from Cyclops's face. As Logan braced himself gratefully for the blast – even the full blast at point blank range that would undoubtedly atomize him – Cyclops closed his eyes.

"Scott, open your eyes!" Logan raged at him. "You have to do it!"

Cyclops kept his eyes closed tightly. "No, I don't."

Logan could feel his claws bending in – any second now Cyclops was going to be confetti. "I might survive it but you won't survive the next five seconds if you don't open your eyes now! Damnit, Scott, do as I tell you!"

And that was when Cyclops – with his eyes still firmly closed – managed a last smile, as he said, quite fondly, "After the last time I let you take charge, and the pain in my ass that turned out to be? No way, Logan."

Logan's claws were closing around Cyclops' back. Any second now, there were going to be severed arteries and shredded flesh and screaming –

"Well, I think that's enough fun and games for today."

Magneto had one of those rich, deep voices that could have made him a fortune on the stage, but Logan still hated the sound of it. Just as his claws were about to break the surface of Cyclops's skin, he found himself plucked away from his victim as if by a giant hand, chains encircled him, spinning him dizzyingly, and he was tossed, painfully, into the back of the X-jet. A few minutes later, Cyclops was escorted in – he was a tall guy but even so Sabretooth loomed over him, pressing too close. Cyclops was wearing his visor again, and was unrestrained. He looked at Logan as he passed him, but then headed straight for the pilot seat and strapped himself in. When Magneto gave him the coordinates, Cyclops punched them in without a dissenting word.

For a second, Logan thought Cyclops had to be under some kind of mind control, but then Magneto leaned forward and murmured to Cyclops in the friendliest fashion, "Remember, any heroics and I rip Wolverine's adamantium skeleton straight out of his body. I'm doubting even he would survive that."

Logan watched Cyclops's jaw muscle tense, the way it usually did only when Logan was tormenting him for fun, and then he was all professional pilot, flying the X-jet exactly where Magneto told him to go. As they took off, the warehouse beneath them erupted into licking tongues of flame, and the jet danced briefly on the blast wave before they were carried out of range.

Magneto said, "Well, well. It seems Charles was wise to order you out of there when he did. Intriguing."

 

Among all the things that Logan really didn't like about being cocooned in chains in the back of a hi-jacked X-jet – _his_ health and safety, of all things, the sword being held over Cyclops's head to keep him obedient to his mentor's old frenemy – was the way he couldn't stop Sabretooth sniffing Scott Summers like he was catnip. Nor could he prevent the guy from reporting his findings to Magneto and Toad – that Visor Boy here and Wolverine had been making the beast with two backs, and Wolverine – in case anyone had doubted it for an instant – had been the one on top.

"Well, well," said Magneto mildly while Cyclops and Logan both clenched their jaws so tightly it was a wonder nothing broke. "Mr. Summers, I must admit you've surprised me. Until today, I had always considered you quite the dullest young mutant of my acquaintance. Of course, the Danger Room always did cause the occasional adrenaline spike…."

"Shower," Sabretooth reported, still sniffing. "Lots of soap."

Magneto nodded. "Ah yes, the showers also had their inevitable attractions. It's almost comforting to know that some of the old traditions endure…."

Cyclops was putting up a pretty good front of ignoring Sabretooth, being all business and pilot-skills, only that telltale tensing of the jaw muscle betraying that he was bothered by a huge, clawed mutant scenting out all his secrets. In fact, when Sabretooth used his taloned fingers to unzip Cyclops's uniform down to the navel so he could get a better scent, Cyclops only looked past him disdainfully to Magneto and said, "Don't you have a leash you can put on him?"

Uber-preppy Scott Summers always made Logan see red, too, so he wasn't surprised when Sabretooth snarled a blood-freezing snarl, grabbed Cyclops' by the hair and yanked his head back, the claws of his right hand tightening viciously around his throat.

Unmoved, Cyclops said, still to Magneto: "Look, if he's going to do that, I really need to engage the autopilot."

Roaring like something maned and tailed from the Serengeti, Sabretooth hurled Cyclops at the ceiling – Toad had to send his tongue out like a bullwhip to snag him by the ankle and yank him back down into the pilot seat, while Magneto remonstrated with Sabretooth about his lack of self-control.

"No one is denying that Mr. Summers can be trying to the patience, but need I remind you that this craft contains no metal of any kind? We need him in one piece to fly us home." His smile at Cyclops couldn't have been bleaker. "It doesn't, however, need to be one undamaged piece – which Mr. Summers might want to bear in mind."

The guy had his own chilly charm, Logan could see that; wasn't entirely oblivious of the pull of more than his magnetic abilities. Magneto was still handsome, unfairly so, and, of course, he had that voice. Back in the day, when Charles Xavier had been a starry-eyed kid, all idealism and big blue eyes, perhaps it was no wonder that he'd fallen pretty hard, but was it too much to hope that he might get over his damned crush already so they could kill this guy?

Magneto did nothing to endear himself further to Logan by saying, "So, Wolverine, I'm curious. Any children? Brothers? Lovers? Mutant-hating nephews? How old are you exactly?"

"I don't know." Logan glowered at him, knowing full well that the guy knew all about his amnesia.

Magneto turned to Cyclops. "Perhaps you'd like to tell me _all_ about your childhood? And why did you run away from the orphanage? Were you just weary of Nebraska or were you hoping to join the circus?"

Cyclops said, with only a flicker of tension, "Like Logan, I have a few gaps."

Magneto said, "I don't know why Charles doesn't just rename his school The Island of Misfit Toys and be done with it."

"Oh, like you got the pick of the bunch for the Brotherhood," Logan growled. 

"Your side may be prettier, but, then, we're not putting out a calendar, are we? You're all so plagued with doubt and self-loathing, whereas we have truly embraced what we are – making our vision so much purer."

Cyclops said, "It always is when you throw ethics out of the window. The National Socialist German Workers' Party didn't tend to be troubled by too many niggling little doubts either."

Magneto's gaze was steely. "Don't bandy words about genocidal regimes with me, young man. I have _lived_ the history that you have only read about."

"And knowing that you've lived it is why I don't understand how you can get from there to here."

"While I don't know how you can logically get anywhere else." Magneto gazed out of the window at the white smoke of snow clouds. "Charles grew up with the option of passing for human in a world of wealth and privilege. His undoubted sincerity still doesn't alter the limitations of his vision."

Cyclops said passionately, "You're the one with the limited vision."

"No, Mr. Summers, that would be you. Unless you want me to remove that visor and leave you to pilot with your eyes closed, I advise you to be quiet." Almost to himself, Magneto said, "How Charles can stand the company of his tiresome little do-gooders and their painful sincerity will always be a mystery to me…."

Sabretooth licked his lips. He was still glowering at Cyclops like he didn't know what he wanted to do to him first but he wanted to do _something_ , and Logan was relieved that Cyclops showed sense enough to stay silent and keep himself busy, adjusting dials and levers like a good little pilot. When he wasn't feasting his eyes on Cyclops like he was raw steak, Sabretooth kept glancing over Logan's way, intensely focused, all anger and…something else. Logan got the feeling he had before with this guy – that he was coming in halfway through some ancient grudge match that he didn't remember. To him, Sabretooth was just one amongst many mutants he didn't much like, but he definitely got the impression that, to Sabretooth, Logan was something special. He remembered the guy had stolen his dogtags like they meant something to him, even though surely the only person they could possibly mean anything to was Logan. Uncomfortably, he wondered if there was a common theme here – like anything that was Logan's, Sabretooth wanted…. 

When Sabretooth started sniffing Cyclops again, intent and curious, Logan had a horrible feeling that what Logan had done to Cyclops in the shower had left a scent residue that was making Sabretooth angry, horny, and possessive. He could tell by the rigidity of Cyclops's shoulders that he was getting that impression, too. Sabretooth pressed in much too close to Cyclops as he inhaled him, half-smothering him, no doubt, with the smell of wet fur. Logan thought about how Sabretooth would be savoring Cyclops's clean mint-toothpaste and ocean fresh-aftershave taste. Sometimes Cyclops carried a hint of engine oil from his beloved motorbike, or the old leather book scent from the library, or of horses from the stable, apples from the orchard, but mostly he smelled of Jean and soap. Today the soap scent was extra strong from where he must have tried to wash Logan off in the morning shower. Logan was afraid Cyclops might have been choking back a tear as he did it; because there was just a hint of salt. Sabretooth snuffled in eagerly, reveling in every odor like it was a bedtime story. When his tongue left a warm, wet stripe along Cyclops's chiseled jaw, Cyclops tried and failed not to shudder. 

Logan said tersely to Magneto, "Hey, Bub, you want to explain the concept of personal space to the hairball?"

Magneto only gave him a chilly smile. "Well, given that Mr. Summers, it seems, is surprisingly open to the advances of animalistic mutants with retractable claws, I think we'll let the courtship continue."

When Sabretooth whispered something in Cyclops's ear too low even for Logan to overhear, he saw Cyclops shudder again before he quickly suppressed it, spine snapped straight and shoulders back a second later. Sabretooth's meaty tongue flickered out and licked around his earlobe, and this time Logan overheard that mocking whisper: _I can smell him all over you. Smell what he did to you, too. You know, anything he can do, I can do better…._

Wrapped in biting chains while Cyclops flew silently towards the climbing sun, Logan began to feel a little sick. 

***

 

Magneto had made Cyclops land in a convenient snowdrift, bound his hands behind his back, then had Logan handcuffed by complicated restraints from which even he couldn't break free, before marching them up a mountain path, carved elegantly through curving walls of snow. The air was crisp and felt a little thin. Logan thought they might be off the map. Their destination, Magneto said, was a cave complex. Logan suspected that it would be a cave complex that had special properties in the rock that shielded it from psychic probing. Magneto was that kind of guy. On the walk up the mountain, Magneto had fallen into step with him, equable and friendly, and nodded ahead to where Cyclops was walking tall, even with his hands cuffed behind his back, while Sabretooth kept a clawed hand on the collar of his leather one-piece. Magneto was murmuring a lot of things that Logan was tuning out as he kept a wary eye on Sabretooth and liked nothing at all about what he was seeing. 

If it had just been intimidation on Sabretooth's part, that would have been one thing, but from where Logan was standing it looked more like fascination bordering on the obsessive. When Toad strayed too close, Sabretooth snarled a chesty warning at him that made the hairs stand up on the back of Logan's neck. He knew what that possessive growl signified: it had echoed in his own head when he thought about Mystique sticking her talons in _his_ annoying Boy Scout. And those claws weren't digging into Cyclops's clothes to stop him from escaping, or even to help haul him through the deeper drifts, but because some of the crossed wiring in that thuggish mutant's brain was currently beating out a pulse of: _mine, mine, mine_. And all because Cyclops had been Logan's first. Maybe that didn't make any sense to him, but that was what was happening, and he had to get Cyclops away from that creep quickly before things got very messy.

"…even so, you probably could get free eventually," Magneto broke into his thoughts conversationally and he realized he must have been tuning the guy out for ten minutes or more. "Of course, I wouldn't permit you to take Mr. Summers with you if you did – given how fond of him Charles is, he's much too valuable a bargaining chip – but, you know, Charles would buy him back in any condition. That doesn't give me a great deal of incentive not to let Sabretooth play with him – which, for some reason, he really wants to do." 

"What do you want from me?" Logan growled.

"Your cooperation. I want you to talk to Charles for me – just to confirm that I'm not lying."

"And will you be lying?"

"Certainly not."

"Anything else?"

"We'll come to that later."

"And you'll keep that overgrown alleycat away from Scott?"

"I will at least encourage him to use foreplay. Going by the effort young Mr. Summers is exerting _not_ to betray any trace of a limp, I gather that would be a step up from his last sexual encounter. Recent, was it? Or are you just so impressive a specimen that the afterglow lingers for days?"

Logan said, "You get to be this much of a dick naturally or does it take practice?"

"Oh, like yourself, Logan – I work at it." Magneto leaned in confidingly. "Have no doubt – Sabretooth loves to cause pain – and the more attractive the victim, the more pain he likes to cause. Up until now, of course, the focus of his interest has been the estimable Ms Munroe, but his interest appears to have…shifted. You have that effect on him."

Tersely, Logan said, "I've told you I'll cooperate – but I'm not the Professor and Cyke's not my adopted son. As far as I'm concerned, Cyclops is only worth saving if he's in mint condition. I don't like sloppy seconds." He stared right back at Magneto as the man tried and failed to second-guess him.

Magneto shrugged elegantly. "Making it all the stranger that you'd be happy with Jean Grey's cast-offs. Still, I suppose from your perspective he was, to all intents and purposes, a virgin, wasn't he? Sabretooth has a regrettable weakness for those as well."

Logan faltered and wished Magneto would just do the honest thing and punch a guy in the guts instead of disemboweling him with words.

When Cyclops stumbled, Sabretooth snarled and pulled him in closer, sniffing him intently again, like something barely human. Logan caught the faint whiff of his own fluids, still discernible even under all the layers of soap with which Cyclops had tried to wash him off, and knew that odor was maddening and exciting Sabretooth with every greedy inhalation. Gritting his teeth, Logan thought that there was nothing he wouldn't have given to undo last night's rough wooing. Even worse, was when the breeze carried back the unmistakable scent of Cyclops's fear. Cyke had faced a lot of bad guys in his time, and he was doing his damnedest to keep his cool, but Sabretooth suddenly wanting him for a sunbeam was freaking him out. It was freaking Logan out, too. Unnerved by a lick across the neck – even creepier how Sabretooth's tongue was following the exact path Logan's had left – Cyclops unwisely tried to pull away. 

Logan started forward angrily as Sabretooth backhanded Cyclops into the right snowbank. There was a new indignation behind Sabretooth's brutality that went right along with his new, unnerving focus – _how dare this creature that now belongs to me disobey me_. It was the thought as much as the action that made Logan snarl. At once every metal-encased bone in his body began to throb and he turned his head with difficulty to see Magneto watching him out of those chilly blue eyes, hand outstretched. "Don't be foolish," he said coldly. One flick of his fingers and they both knew that Logan was thirty feet in the air or being used as a human weapon again.

Sabretooth grabbed Cyclops by the hair and threw him into the opposite bank. With his hands cuffed behind him, it took all of Cyclops training just to keep him on his feet. He bounced off the snowbank, staggered, and straightened up defiantly, turning his head to demand of Sabretooth quietly, "What the hell's the matter with you?"

His confusion was understandable because he wasn't getting the full palette that was half-choking Logan: testosterone off the scale from Sabretooth and climbing higher with every moment spent in the company of a desirable object tainted by Wolverine's scent. All Sabretooth wanted to do right now was take Cyclops away from Logan and make him his own – Logan could smell that even diluted by the crisp scent of snow – but Cyclops hadn't got that memo. Unfortunately, Sabretooth wasn't big on explanations, so Cyke's answer was a punch that nearly took his head off, and this time, even he couldn't stay on his feet. He slammed down on one knee and then hauled himself back up through sheer force of will, but he looked muzzy, staggering sideways as he tried to clear his head with a painful shake. Sabretooth making to hit him again was too much for Logan's fraying self-control and he body-slammed Sabretooth away from Cyclops with a snarl of fury.

"Leave him alone, you animal!"

Cyclops said, "Logan, watch out!"

A forearm smashed into Logan's face hard enough to send him sprawling, before Sabretooth pulled him up by the hair, leaning in close to say, "I always did like to break your toys, Logan. This time you can watch me do it. Maybe then you'll learn to share."

As Logan snarled, claws springing out, Magneto said wearily, "Don't force me to turn you inside out, Wolverine. I'm thinking Mr. Summers wouldn't want to have to watch that."

Cyclops said hastily, "Magneto, we're both cooperating. You don't need to turn Logan into a tuning fork."

Magneto said, "Cooperate silently, Mr. Summers. It is golden, you know."

Lowering his voice, Logan turned on Magneto angrily. "Are you going to let that psycho keep smacking him around?"

Magneto's eyes were steely in the ice-light. "Oh, I'm going to let him do far worse than that."

This time, when Sabretooth grabbed Cyclops by the hair and pulled him in close, Cyclops didn't fight him, he flinched a little at the rank, hormonal, rawness of the guy dragging him along, licking and sniffing him as if he were a meat platter, but he bore it unprotestingly, despite the little shivers of revulsion he couldn't completely disguise. And Logan bit it down, what he wanted to call Sabretooth, what he wanted to call Magneto for permitting Sabretooth to treat Cyclops like an edible slave, what he wanted to tell them he would do to them if they laid one finger on Scott Summers. The truth was that they could do anything they liked and there wasn't a damned thing that he could do to stop them. 

 

The caves were all coolly crystalline; echoes and shadows and way too many mirror images of their battered reflections shimmering blurrily in the ice. 

Cyclops had put up such a good show of being cowed and obedient, letting Sabretooth drag him along by the collar as if he was resigned to his fate, that Logan had been convinced along with everyone else. So, when Cyclops fell to his knees on the cave floor and started a horrible, unearthly wailing, Logan was his best ally, stinking of authentic anxiety while his voice trembled in a way he could never have faked as he told them that those blows to the head must have interfered with his force beams somehow, let the pressure build up. Magneto was too old a hand not to know when a guy was in earnest and Logan's panic was tangible. He had nodded to Sabretooth and the cuffs had been snapped loose from Cyclops's wrists.

Even as Logan said, "Scott?" Cyclops was reminding him of how incredibly fast the guy could be. With expressionless efficiency, Cyclops's head cracked back to send Sabretooth reeling, he blocked a punch from Toad, followed up with an uppercut that put Toad on his ass, slammed his elbow into the side of a pouncing Sabretooth's head without even needing to look at him, and spun with agile grace, poised to send a blast straight at Magneto – who had calmly flicked his fingers to position Logan between them as a human shield.

"Do it!" Logan yelled.

Cyclops spun off his heel and hit Sabretooth with a blast instead, throwing the guy hard into the wall of the cavern, but as he turned to deal with Toad, the guy bounded over the red beam, just as Magneto threw Logan at Cyclops and slammed him into the wall, then used him to pin him there. "I'm sorry," Logan said, feeling Cyclops flinch and grate as he was ground into the ice.

"Not your fault, Logan," Cyclops said again. "As far as we know, you never asked to have a metal skeleton." Logan knew the guy must be sick with disappointment at not getting to escape and was probably scared of what was coming next – Logan was scared enough on his behalf – but none of it showed in his voice, which was as steady as ever as he added: "I had to try."

"You've got some good moves," Logan said, wanting, for once, to be nice, and Cyclops gave a little half-laugh. "Glad you finally noticed."

As he strolled over, Magneto said, "That was very foolish, Mr. Summers. Fancy you living in a school and not understanding the moral of the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. I was going to hold off on using you as a guinea-pig for the sample Mystique stole from Worthington Labs, in case it did you irrevocable harm, but I find that prospect troubles me somewhat less now." 

A snap of his fingers and Logan crashed to his knees on the hard floor of the cave, while metal cuffs snapped back around Cyclops's wrists, pinioning them behind his back. Another disdainful flick of the hand, and Cyclops was dragged by the metal cuffs over to where Toad was telling Sabretooth to stop lying around on the job. At the sight of a cuffed Cyclops slammed down in front of him, Sabretooth surged up with a roar and a strong smell of singed fur and primal rage.

Magneto held up an admonishing finger. "Do _not_ kill him. We need him alive."

Then Logan was being dragged through the air by the aching pain of magnetism exerted on his metal-coated bones while every sinew and tendon shrieked a protest, and he swept on an agony cloud into an inner cave while metal doors slammed closed, shutting him into a room with Magneto, and leaving Cyclops alone with Toad and Sabretooth.

 

"…So, you see, Charles, we've both been sent the same intriguing piece of technology, presumably by the same person that baited that exploding trap. If you want to see your people again, I want the results of every test Dr McCoy has run and everything that you and Miss Grey have learned from your own more esoteric studies…."

Through a haze of pain, and with every sense trying to work out what was going on next door, Logan found that he was up. Magneto's steely voice, said, "Your Wolverine can confirm everything that I've told you."

Grittily, Logan said, "Tell this spoon-bending son-of-a-bitch that you won't give him squat until he sends Scott back to you unharmed."

Magneto said, "Oh, I'm afraid 'unharmed' was never on the agenda. Alive, however, might still be an achievable goal – although, I have to tell you, Charles, that, so far, I'm finding your affection for the boy somewhat perplexing. Like the Wolverine here, he's really not a very charming guest…."

Logan tuned out the Professor hand-wringing over why Magneto shouldn't want to hurt fellow mutants – Magneto, he noticed, was more politely attentive – letting all the back and forth negotiations wash over him as he tried to hear what was going on in the main cave. When Magneto switched off the connection, it felt as if hope faded away with the Professor's voice.

Magneto shook his head at Logan. "The whole point is that Sabretooth wants you to be watching. He won't start without you."

"Don't let him do this – please."

He had managed to surprise Magneto. There was just the flicker of an eyelid. "Why, Wolverine, are you begging?"

"Yes!" he ground out. "Trade Scott back to the Professor for whatever it is you want to know. Run your damn tests on me. Please!"

Regretfully, Magneto shook his head. "You're too valuable to risk neutralizing. Mr. Summer's mutant ability, however, is really not that remarkable. On occasion, I imagine it's downright inconvenient. And, be honest now, wouldn't you rather be gazing into his eyes than that visor – you know, while you're basely exploiting him for sexual satisfaction?" Magneto gave him a moment and then cocked his head on one side like a bird of prey. "No rebuttal? No insistence that it wasn't like that? That it was tender and beautiful?" 

His voice dripped with contempt and Logan wondered briefly if it had been tender and beautiful between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr back in the day before ideological differences and a deflected bullet had divided them; he rather suspected it had. Perhaps, letting Sabretooth have Cyclops for a chew toy had always been about Magneto punishing Logan for not appreciating what he'd had when he had it. Perhaps, even the constant threat of being used as the weapon by which Cyclops would be mangled had more to do with what Magneto had done to the Professor all those years ago than it did with Logan's adamantium skeleton – as if a guilt shared could be lessened. Perhaps, before this was over, he and Cyclops were going to be used to play out the issues of every goddamned mutant on the planet.

Trying to keep his temper, Logan said, "Look, I'm sorry love's young dream didn't work out for you and Xavier. I'm sorry you put him in a wheelchair and you can't fix it. Don't take it out on Cyclops when he wasn't even born when all that crap was going down."

Magneto said, "Interesting."

"What?"

"The way you make yourself call him 'Cyclops' when, in every unguarded moment, you think of him as 'Scott'. Don't try to lecture me about my subconscious impulses, Logan. I assure you, I'm not the stranger to myself that you are. Let me lay things on the line for you – I prefer not to kill my fellow mutants. I believe a war is coming in which our very right to exist is threatened. I suspect that Charles and I will, once again, end up on opposite sides. I don't want to murder him or his schoolchildren. I do, however, want to lessen the threat they represent to my plans. Mr Summers is the leader of the X-Men. He's also a sanctimonious do-gooder whom I am frankly astonished you managed to get naked without the aid of alcohol or inhibition-lowering drugs. I believe his efficacy in the role of leader will be greatly reduced after some time spent in Sabretooth's intimate company. I believe yours will be proportionally reduced if you are forced to witness his…re-education. Is my logic faulty?"

Logan said, "Don't do this. It's…wrong."

Magneto rolled his eyes. "You're starting to sound like Charles. I advise you to get far away from that school at the first opportunity, Wolverine. It's making you soft."

 

These weren't exactly laboratory conditions. Cyclops was kneeling in the corner of a dank cave, hands still cuffed behind his back. Logan was kneeling next to him, an ache of metal bindings, while Sabretooth and Toad looked on – Sabretooth still smelling singed and angry – and Magneto played doctor.

Logan realized that he was never going to understand Magneto. His interaction with the guy had been limited to Magneto treating individual mutants that Logan really cared about – like Rogue – very badly; which had made him doubt that he was really the warrior saviour of mutant-kind that he seemed to think. However, when he injected Cyclops with the stolen formula, he was oddly tender about it. His apology actually sounded heartfelt.

"I'm doing this to you, young man, so that we – all of us – know what we're up against. That doesn't mean I like it or that I'm not sorry it has to be done. In a better world, where we were valued as we should be, this abomination would never have been synthesized."

Logan thought about pointing out that it wasn't as if the humans didn't keep enough stuff in test-tubes to wipe themselves out a hundred times over, too, like anthrax and smallpox and every kind of plague toxin, but realized in time that Magneto really didn't need _more_ reasons to hate the humans, so held his tongue. 

Cyclops didn't deign to answer Magneto and he didn't flinch as the needle went in. Logan could smell that he was scared and hear the increased beat of his heart, but no one would have known it just by looking at him. Cyclops kept staring stolidly ahead as godknowswhat was depressed into his vein, like all he'd be changed by was a vaccination mark. Logan felt a surge of pride in the guy's stoicism that spiked up then deflated into another layer of self-hatred. The fonder he let himself admit he had become of Scott Summers, the worse a thing it seemed to have just fucked him without kindness.

"What are you doing to him?" he asked again.

Magneto was looking down at Cyclops sadly. "If it works, it will, alas, render him no better than a human. Let's hope – for all our sakes – that it doesn't work."

Logan's attention was all for Cyclops. He pressed closer to him, clumsy with bonds, wondering if the guy would have even taken some comfort from his scent, if he could smell him, or if, today, Logan was just another thing for Scott Summers to flinch from. "You feel okay?" Cyclops shuddered and Logan wished he had a hand free to grip his shoulder, give him some kind of support. "Does it hurt?"

Cyclops grimaced. "A little. Not too bad."

That probably meant it was excruciating, but Logan pretended to believe him. "You still feel like…you…?"

"Something's happening." A flinch. "Damn."

Magneto was still talking, as much to himself as them: "…the source as yet – she will need to go back in to learn more, and, of course, this is only the prototype, but they're working on a way to eradicate us as if we were a virus. If it can do what they say, then they will weaponize it at the first opportunity – I know how genocide begins…."

"Scott…?" Logan looked at him anxiously.

"The pressure behind my eyes – it's gone."

Logan thought about what it would be like not to have claws that shot out painfully when the rage bubbled up, and knew that it would feel like he was someone else. Someone who might be better at getting close to others, but someone else all the same. He didn't want to be someone else, and he guessed Cyclops didn't either.

"Time for a test," Magneto said regretfully. He positioned Logan directly in front of Cyclops and lifted off the visor, while Sabretooth, grunting, grabbed a handful of soft, dark hair to stop their test subject from moving his head. Logan thought he would never get used to how young and vulnerable Scott looked without his visor. This close up, his thick black lashes looked an inch long and his damned cheekbones looked as if they'd been molded by a master. Still wearily, as if they were tiresome children with whom he had now spent far too many hours and could hardly wait to hand them back to their nanny, Magneto said, "Open your eyes, Mr. Summers."

As they stayed resolutely closed, Magneto said, "I remove Wolverine's skeleton piece by piece or you open your eyes. Which do you think would be the least painful way for him to die?"

Logan said, "Just do it, Scott."

The eyelashes flickered and then the lids slowly opened, even as Logan braced himself for a blast of red, the ruby light faded and there were those blue eyes, even more soul-tearingly sorrowful than he remembered, and that face, unbearably young without a shield. He felt another pang that Jean wasn't here to see this, and for the first time realized that – if they survived this – he still had her to face, and that, though she might forgive Scott in a heartbeat for succumbing to brief temptation, he seriously doubted she was going to forgive him for making her boyfriend wince. She liked him, a lot, and there were days when he thought she found him more sexually alluring than any other guy she'd ever met. But she loved Scott; he was _her_ turf, and had been for too long for her not to get seriously pissy when someone else walked on the grass – especially when he stomped all over it with hobnailed boots. He suspected she might just do the telekinetic's equivalent of 'Whoops – butterfingers!' and toss him onto a robot killing ray the next time they were in the Danger Room. And it was sad that he would have given anything to be back there right now, even if he was getting his ass kicked by simulated death while every other X-Man stood back and let it happen, just to pay him back – and why wasn't he dead yet?

"What the hell…?" he demanded.

Cyclops blinked in confusion. "The world's not red anymore…." He squinted at Logan, who was probably too close for a guy with good vision to get properly in focus. "I didn't know what color your eyes were until now. They're…nice." And just for a breathless second, Scott Summers was looking at him with yearning, like he was trying to imprint Logan's hair and eyes and skin tone in his memory in living color. And Logan actually saw it in those eyes that Cyclops was used to having shielded from the world – Cyclops thinking how handsome Logan was, wistfully, and how crazy he had been to think that Wolverine had ever wanted anything from him but rough sex and a quick climax before he stole his girlfriend.

Logan said, "No – it wasn't like that."

Cyclops blinked in confusion. "What wasn't?"

Sabretooth yanked Cyclops's head back unceremoniously and looked into his eyes, then gave another grunt of approval. "Pretty," he said. Somehow he turned that into a jeer at Logan, too.

_Well, don't I feel shallow? Consider me duly chastened, you hairy sack of bile. Maybe, unlike you, furball, I actually like the guy inside the washboard abs and the chiseled cheekbones and the big blue eyes. Maybe I liked him before I'd ever even seen his pretty eyes…._

Magneto was in too much of a towering fury to care about anything else, rising up like the wrath of god to rant about the insect arrogance of Homo sapiens daring to treat a higher stage of evolution as if it were the common cold. He strode off gracefully to call up Mystique, demanding that she bring a helicopter at once so he could return to his main base, no doubt to orchestrate some complicated vengeance. As Sabretooth growled a protest, Magneto waved a hand in their direction. "Have your fun, if you must, wait until you receive the information I asked for from Charles and then send them home – alive, and in one piece. Let them keep their little plane as they seem so fond of it…."

"Tell him not to touch Scott!" Logan demanded.

"Oh, I think we both know he's going to be more than touching Scott."

"You said you'd send Cyclops back to Xavier in one piece. Are you really trusting this animal to exercise enough self-control not to make you a liar?"

Magneto's backward glance was entirely dismissive. "Just because you didn't trouble to rein in your baser appetites, Wolverine – don't judge everyone else by your low standards."

Logan strained to break the bonds, definitely edging towards panic-stricken now, and they didn't budge. As his claws flashed out in frustration, a flick of Magneto's fingers sent a metal collar to snap shut around his neck, a chain dangled and then lashed itself securely around a ring embedded in the wall six inches from where Cyclops was kneeling, bound, and de-beamed, with a manacled Logan close enough to breathe him in and about as much use to him as a headache. Logan struggled uselessly and the collar just tightened. As Cyclops looked up at him in concern, clearly afraid he was going to be choked to death, Logan gave him a half-assed smile of reassurance while, he suspected, the eyes whose color Cyclops could now see probably broadcast exactly how scared he was. A metal gurney was summoned from some back chamber and sent screeching to a halt in his direct line of vision. It dangled with cuffs and straps like a sacrificial altar. 

Magneto gave Sabretooth a long, warning glare. "Don't break any bones. No permanent damage. You might even try a little…wooing – just for a change."

Cyclops refused to look at the mobile altar on which it was so obviously intended that he should be sacrificed, doing the science thing instead, more to himself than Logan, on how unlikely it was that Worthington Labs would have got it right first time, and that he would lay odds the effects of the so-called vaccine would only be temporary. 

Logan was forcing himself to look at Sabretooth, assessing his strength and size, and the likely consequences of his reaction when Cyclops – inevitably – tried to fight him off and Sabretooth lost his temper. He looked at those huge hairy fists and thought about how breakable the human body was, and exactly what damage Sabretooth was capable of inflicting if he started using his cock as a weapon.

Cyclops said, "Logan, when we're back on the jet, remind me to take a blood sample before it breaks up in my system. It would be helpful to know what we're up against."

_Except, right now, Scott, what we're up against is Sabretooth's loosening self-control and his hardening dick, and if we don't come up with a way to neutralize one or both of those problems, I think he might end up killing you._

Logan realized he had to face up to the fact that this was happening, which made it a problem to be got through, like mutant-killing robots, or telepathic control. Things that couldn't be stopped had to be survived – somehow. He spoke rapidly, "Scott, this guy has a grudge-match with me, going way back, that I don't remember. I think you need to bear that in mind to keep him sweet."

Cyclops shot him a look of lacerating reproach that made it absolutely clear that no way could Logan have been such a bastard to him in that shower cubicle if he had been able to see Scott Summers' eyes at the time. Logan said, "I know what I'm asking."

Cyclops said, with a hint of panic that he was trying really hard to suppress, "I can't."

"All he needs to hear is that it was better with him than with me." Logan finally let the guy see all the tenderness and regret that he had gone to such lengths to hide. "And – let's face it – that wouldn't be difficult."

"I'd rather be dead."

"Well, you're going to be – or so ripped up you'll wish you were. He has all my anger-management issues and then some. Without Magneto here to keep him in line, he's going to really hurt you if you don't give him what he wants to hear. And I'm sorry."

Cyclops started to say, "It's not your –" and this time Logan didn't let him finish. "Yes, it is. This one is my fault. He never looked at you twice until I did. Everything he does to you he'll be doing because of me. And I'm sorry – and if Jean doesn't kill me for it, I'll be really surprised."

When Cyclops spoke it was with a petulance that Logan found so endearing under the circumstances that it made his heart ache: "I'm not property."

"It's just how he thinks of you – something of mine that he wants to take away from me."

Cyclops held his gaze and Logan realized that it made him feel a little breathless when he looked into those blue eyes for too long. Made him feel the way he did around Jean, only worse, because as well as the heart-thump and the breath-gasp, there was the yawning guilt. Cyclops said reproachfully, "Is that how you think of me, too? Like something of Jean's that you wanted to take away from her?"

And, given that he was still being mesmerized by blindingly blue eyes staring unblinkingly into his, perhaps it was no wonder that his reply was a stumbling: "You are Jean's. She…saw you first."

"Is this under the finders keepers principle?" Cyclops demanded. "Or the 'whoever licks the frosting off the cupcake gets to eat it' law?"

"Little bit of both," Logan admitted, still hypnotized.

Cyclops said, "Logan, you're a dick." And, bizarrely, that seemed to give him comfort, as if in all the swirling vortex of being bereft of his mutant powers and probably about to be violated by a huge hairy mutant a bare few hours after his first uncomfortable encounter with anal sex, there was at least the one reliable constant of Wolverine being a dick.

Logan said, "Scott, please don't fight him. It'll just make him mad and he'll hurt you worse." And he had no idea how much self-control Cyclops had to exercise, here, in this thoroughly shitty place to which Logan's issues had brought him, _not_ to say: _Well, you would know_. He knew the words must be burning on Scott Summers' tongue, but the guy swallowed them down and just gave the brief, taut nod of someone who was making no promises but would try his best.

 

And, of course, when it came to it, after Magneto had whirled off in his Mystique-piloted helicopter on a wave of righteous anger, and they were left, bound and helpless, with a lust-stinking Sabretooth and an eagerly anticipating Toad, the one who lost it was Logan. He was the one who roared, and whose claws sprang out uselessly, carving fissures into the granite wall behind him, who nearly broke his own neck as he strangled himself trying to bodily pull himself loose from unyielding steel and immovable rock. He was the one who ranted and raved at Sabretooth, threatening him with horribly painful death, warning him what he would do to him if he laid one dirty, clawed finger on Scott Summers.

Some of the stream of words must have hit home because suddenly all of Sabretooth's rage was for him. The guy came at him like he meant it, snarling, "No one kills you but me!" His claws were out and he was roaring like a lion, ready to take Logan apart with his bare hands while Logan told him to try it, if he thought he could. Except, with his hands manacled behind his back, he was pretty much a slab of meat with healing factor, there to be shredded. Claws raked and stabbed, and there was a fire in his guts, a blood foam in the air, as Sabretooth just ripped into him, and Logan welcomed the pain flares, slash after slash of his own flesh ribboning, because he wanted to hurt right now, even this badly, even with his guts unspooling, and his skin flaying down to the metal-dipped bone.

That was when Cyclops shouted into the blood-spumed madness, "You're just like him!"

And when Logan turned to him in shock, hurt to the heart that Scott would say that about him, he found that the guy Cyclops was looking up at with that wounded, disappointed expression on his face was…Sabretooth. Cyclops said, like he was crushed by it, "You're both just animals. There's no difference between you."

Sabretooth was gazing into Cyclops's face intently now – the face he had bruised, the mouth he had cut – his claws retracting as the rage died out of him, confused by Cyclops's inexplicable disappointment. And then light dawned as he finally got it. Sabretooth said, oddly shocked for a villain, "Wolverine didn't ask you, did he…? He just…?"

And the look Cyclops gave him was masterful: reproachful, under the lashes, like he was hoping against hope that _someone_ would turn out not to be a bad guy but with fast-dwindling hope. There was all manner of tattered dignity in the way he said, "What do you think?"

Toad was shocked _and_ delighted. "Hey! Who knew Wolverine was a 'Wham Bam Thank You, Mister' kind of guy?"

Logan found himself getting a surprised look from Sabretooth – surprised and slightly admiring, while he stared back like he'd done that and worse and he wasn't sorry, pulling on the black hat Cyclops had handed him like it was a perfect fit, wondering if Cyclops had called it right, and if every bad guy wanted to be the good guy from time to time – even Sabretooth. Sabretooth sniffed Cyclops again as if to check his findings, newly intrigued. "I don't smell blood."

Cyclops hit him with the baby blues again, a new wealth of bitterness in the way he said, "Well, I guess that makes what he did to me okay then."

A minute before Sabretooth would have trodden on Cyclops to rip Logan's face off; now he would have trodden on Logan without even seeing him, just to keep that strange new connection between him and Cyclops humming. He pulled him up by the clothes, quite gently, to sniff him again; and there was such an intensity there that Logan was careful even how he breathed; not wanting to break this thread Cyclops was spinning that made him think of horned ogres held by a leash of human hair.

Sabretooth said, "He hurt you." It wasn't a question.

Cyclops gave him another of those under the eyelashes looks, like he was bitter and wounded and expected nothing but would have liked something to hold onto all the same. "Isn't that what you're going to do, too? More of the same? Because you're indestructible and I can't hurt you so why not do whatever the hell you want however you want to do it?"

Sabretooth said, "No!" like he hadn't spent the rest of the day planning to rape him. He grabbed Cyclops by the shoulders and jerked him forward, gazing into his eyes with unblinking intensity. "I'm better than him. You'll like it with me." And Logan saw just the glimpse of a person there, buried under all that rage and cruelty and primal impulse, someone who might even feel the briefest glimmering fragments of occasional regret.

And Cyclops said, with a shoulder slump, as if he had hoped once but experience had crushed it out of him, "I don't believe you, Victor." And Logan saw the shock of it go through Sabretooth like an electric current – of someone using his first name.

That was when Logan got to sit silently, manacled in a dirty cave, his body a fading blaze of pain as his thirty-odd wounds closed up, claw rents to the ribcage and thighbone, severed arteries and all, and watch Sabretooth set out to seduce Scott Summers.

***

 

It was making Logan's head spin that Cyclops, of all people, straight-laced, honest, Boy Scout Cyclops, was playing Sabretooth like a Stradivarius. He was Mata-Hari meets Salome without a single veil. And he was doing it for Logan's sake. If it had been just Cyclops and Sabretooth in the cave, Cyclops would have fought him every step of the way, and been half-killed as a consequence, but his desperate need to lure the terrifying brute away from Logan before he ripped out Logan's guts, had taught him subterfuge, and now Sabretooth was kissing him, slow and tender, the way Logan hadn't in the shower. And Cyclops was letting him. Cyclops was so damned concerned about Sabretooth going after Logan again, that he was willing to let him do anything. He'd already let him claw off his leather suit, and sniff him all over, inhaling him like he was a new drug on the market, let him snuffle right into the places where Logan had smeared him with semen, and he'd made just the right soft, scared sounds, because the last guy who'd gone to that place had bruised him to the core.

That was when Sabretooth had pulled him in close again, fingers digging into his arms, as he said fiercely, "I won't hurt you." Like people trusting him had even been something he wanted at any point in his misbegotten life, but now Cyclops had him ass over teakettle determined to prove that he wasn't the bad guy that Logan was. They were all the way through the looking-glass here. And Cyclops bore the fact that the guy's fingers were practically cutting off the circulation to his hands without flinching, because in this scenario Sabretooth was the good guy and his fingers didn't bruise. Sabretooth kissed him again, cradling his head gently now, like he hadn't nearly cracked his skull before, and Cyclops closed his eyes and let it happen, didn't flinch, didn't shudder, just opened his mouth like a baby bird and let the guy put his tongue inside, making himself bear it.

They were two feet away from him – bondage rape on a metal gurney off the table now that Sabretooth had decided that what he wanted was to make Cyclops his right where Logan could see it on the cave floor. He could smell them, he could almost taste them, and all he could do was what Scott was doing – suck it up and take it. With Toad stuck tight to the cave wall where he could spectate like it was the SuperBowl, Logan had to watch Sabretooth carding his claws through Scott Summers' hair, plundering his mouth with slow, possessive kisses, then licking his way slowly down that honed, toned body, tonguing his nipples, his ribcage, the lean flesh of his inner thighs. He had to watch Sabretooth licking at Scott's ballsack and tonguing the vein of his cock, then taking the head into his mouth and warming it with deft suction, while Sabretooth shot triumphant looks Logan's way, as he demonstrated the _right_ way to treat a naked X-Man.

Scott looked much too young and vulnerable, cut out of his suit, and spread out for the taking, but that worked for him, too. With no force beams and his lean strength dwarfed by Sabretooth's hairy bulk, blue eyes so big under those crazily long lashes, he could fake being a scared kid out of his depth and scarred by a bad experience all too well. He made the right distressed sounds when Sabretooth was licking him all over, like he wanted to like it but he was wary of what came next, and crazed, raging Sabretooth sent out soothing purrs as he touched and tasted everything on offer. He kept stroking him with those cruel clawed hands, like he could never get enough of touching warm skin, not seeming to notice that he was leaving ugly scratches everywhere. When he bent his head and licked, Logan knew just what he was tasting – that light sheen of sweat over soap, salt and sweet on the tongue. Then Sabretooth gave Logan another sneering glance and bent his head lower, pulled Scott up by the hips and delved into him deeper still, tongue following the path that Logan had taken with his careless cock.

That little gasp and spine arch wasn't faked, Logan was sure – the kid was genuinely shocked by the sensation of that warm tongue inside him, and it was painfully touching how his gaze went straight to Logan, like he could still be reassured by the guy who had got him into this mess. Logan wished he was telepathic so he could tell him to hang in there, that he was doing great, that he was going to get through this, but he guessed his expression must have told at least some of that story because Scott gave him a brief nod, like he got it and it helped, and then closed his eyes tight so he wouldn't have to watch Logan watching him get fucked all over again.

Sabretooth was a big guy in every way and even with foreplay his idea of gentle was most people's idea of pretty brutal. When he hooked Scott's long legs over his massive shoulders and pushed into Scott with that big dripping dick of his, Logan had to practically chew through his own lip _not_ to tell him to get the fuck off him, and he saw Scott gritting his teeth like a superhero so as not to cry out. Toad damned near fell off the wall, he was so dizzy with the excitement of it. But then there was the painful irony of Sabretooth making soothing sounds, and telling Scott it would hurt less in a little while, that he just needed to relax – all the stuff Logan, the good guy, hadn't done when he was giving him that first time in the shower. 

But it was stomach-turning how ugly a business it looked when Logan was the onlooker and had to listen to Sabretooth grunting as he worked his way in with brutal determination, when he could see the pain jolting through Scott's body in time to each thrust. It wasn't just the internal bruising, his whole unprotected body was getting ground into the rock-floor, with his bound arms taking the brunt of it, his left hand getting the skin scraped off with each impact. And Logan had to smell the pain on the air as Scott bore it. He could see exactly how much it hurt when Sabretooth's clawed fingers grabbed at Scott's ass so he could push in deeper and began to hip-slam him harder, making his lean body jolt like it was being hit with Storm's lightning bolts. And because Sabretooth was watching him hungrily all the time, Scott had to keep his face a careful blank even though his eyes were watering with the pain. 

Then Logan had to watch Sabretooth pounding him with crazed concentration, while he gazed unblinkingly into those pained blue eyes, Scott returning his focus, not flinching except from the deepest thrusts, not crying out or letting any of his real feelings show, and not once flickering a single look in Logan's direction where Sabretooth could see it and get mad. All those years of training and none of them had been for this, but they were paying off all the same. It was almost a relief when Sabretooth's flimsy self-control abandoned him and he flung back his head to howl his satisfaction as he slam-slam-slammed Scott into the cave-rock with bestial savagery – at least then Scott could screw up his face in pain, unseen by the guy screwing him, and quickly wipe the tears from his eyes on his straining shoulders.

When Sabretooth came, it was with a snarl of triumph and a contemptuous sneer at Logan, because his was the fresh scent and fresh come now, and Logan's semen was just dried up flakes with no fertility left. It bothered Logan how well he understood that impulse, even though Scott couldn't be impregnated by either of them, still a dark primal part of himself resented and raged at his scent being overlaid by Sabretooth's, just as Sabretooth intended. 

Sabretooth pulled out more gently than Logan had done, albeit making Logan and Scott both flinch in the process – while, up on the ceiling now, Toad gave a dry-throated gasp of enjoyment – and then inhaled the scent of his fresh come as it puddled on the cave floor, proof of his potency. He seemed barely winded, and licked at Scott hungrily, lapping between his legs to taste himself, while telling him how much he'd liked it, and how much better it had been for him than with that brute beast Wolverine. It took Scott three attempts to speak, jolted and traumatized as he was, but when he did, he managed steady-toned sounds of agreement, like it wasn't killing him to be paying his rapist compliments.

Inside, Logan raged and wept for Scott, thinking, _Kid, you are a fucking hero, and this is all my fault, and if it takes the rest of my life I will try to make it up to you_ , and outside he kept up the smoldering, resentful façade of a guy seeing his sex-toy being played with by someone more able. Sabretooth kept sending him sly, triumphant glances as he demonstrated his superior skills with tongue and bruising fingers, then murmured tenderly to Scott, "Did he fuck you again?"

"No."

"No stamina. I knew it."

He tipped Scott over onto his knees, revealing the ridges of his spine and his straining shoulders and bound, aching arms, his left hand almost skinned, and all the bruises Sabretooth had left earlier, darkening against his skin. He licked the salt from Scott's splayed palms, the blood from his hand and cuff-torn wrists, and gave Logan another sneering look before he thrust hard into Scott from behind, triumphant. Only Logan saw Scott's grimace as he bowed his head and bore it, and knew that Scott couldn't take much more of this; Scott fighting to stay silent as thrust followed thrust in places already impossibly bruised. Logan had to close his eyes to get through it without raging aloud: _Get off him! Get off him! You fucker! Get off him!_ But he wasn't seeing Sabretooth, he was seeing himself, in the shower, and he wanted to rip that guy away from Scott Summers and throw him through a plate-glass window. He heard Scott choke down a cry, and opened his eyes to see him pressing his forehead against the cave wall to give himself some other source of pressure to offset the pain. Scott's breathing was ragged, raw gasps dragged over pain ridges, and Logan knew his lungs were burning and his eyes were burning and his whole damned body was burning from the relentless hammering of Sabretooth's lust.

It felt as if it would never end and then Sabretooth sped up, wild and brutal, while Scott fought with everything he had to stay silent, and Logan thought _There is a hell and this is it_ and then – finally – Sabretooth pulled out to ejaculate, with a satisfied grunt as he smeared himself all over Scott's thighs, creamy ribbons of semen that Sabretooth traced with a triumphant finger. Logan thought bitterly: _We are animals, just like he said_. 

Sabretooth pulled Scott onto his lap, Scott still fighting to keep his face unreadable, his ragged breaths silent, not to let out any of the pain that he was having to swallow down. His bound arms alone must be at breaking point. Logan suspected that every part of Scott Summers was at breaking point. Given how tall Scott was, all broad shoulders and narrow hips and long, long legs, it was a little horrifying how that crazed brute dwarfed him as he pulled him in close and smelt him all over, revelling in the way his scent had overlaid everything else: Logan, Jean, sanity, any life but this. 

Toad landed on the cave floor with a satisfied splat, giving Sabretooth a look of admiration. "You should have your own cable channel," he said. "That was awesome. I say from now on – we fuck an X-Man every trip out."

Sabretooth snarled at Toad in a way that made it clear he wasn't looking to see his wooing trivialized. Clearly, from his perspective, he and Scott had made beautiful music together. If Sabretooth's anger was scary, his affection was terrifying, as he purred and petted, and stroked Scott's hair, nuzzled him lovingly, licked him like he couldn't decide if he wanted to adopt him or just start eating him, skin-strip by skin-strip. His claws had left raking scratches all over Scott's body and Sabretooth licked the fresh beads of blood from those in a leisurely fashion, the edge off his hunger now. 

When he said, "Tell me I was better than Wolverine," it was with the satisfied air of a guy with a job well done. 

For a terrible moment, Logan thought Scott was going to jib at the final fence, but he swallowed hard, and sucked it up again. His voice was perfectly steady as he said, "You were better than Wolverine."

Sabretooth tilted Scott's face up with the point of a claw under his chin. "I didn't hurt you like he did."

Scott looked right into Sabretooth's crazy eyes, and said, "No, Victor, you didn't hurt me like he did." And the worst part of it was that Logan saw the moment when Scott realized he was speaking the perfect truth.

 

When the information had come through from the Professor – and the real irony of it all was that Xavier being the sap he was where Magneto was concerned, he would probably have shared it with him anyway – that the supposedly alien artifact was, in fact, a booby-trap laced with a particularly nasty anti-mutant virus, and this was how to decommission it but he still advised a period of quarantine and that this precaution should be taken and blah blah blah, it was time for them to go home.

Logan had to get up slowly, as the chain was unwound, not because he was stiff but because his rage was like a sea-monster just under the surface, and he couldn't trust it not to break out in a spray of salt-blood and foam. But when Scott tried to stand, his legs just couldn't hold him up, and Sabretooth barely caught him.

Toad was delighted, and began a running commentary on the likely effects of Sabretooth's prowess, especially coming, as their extended session had, so soon after Wolverine had been having his way with him. Logan fought to block out the words while, nevertheless, a new addition to his To Do list popped up marked 'Kill Toad'. Sabretooth, however, now a hero, wrapped Scott's bruised, scratched body in a blanket and swept him up into his manly arms. He carried him out into the swirling snow like he was rescuing him from a burning building, while Toad grabbed the end of Logan's chain, and said, "Nice doggy. Wanna go for a walk?"

Logan's eyes must have spoken volumes because Toad did flinch a little, nevertheless he said rapidly, "You try anything and I'll tell Sabretooth to bang your boy again. It's not like he needs much encouragement. You really think Red Eyes could fake his way through another bout?"

Logan's teeth clashed together like a portcullis closing on all the threats he had to swallow. All the hateful things about Toad's statement and the hardest to deal with was the realization that Scott wasn't even Red Eyes any more. He was just another breakable human, bereft of super powers. He said carefully, "He wasn't faking."

Toad sneered and tugged on the chain as he bounded after Sabretooth. "Yeah, right. I'm sure he loved every minute of it. Who wouldn't want Sabretooth's hairy dick rammed up his ass?" As he followed Sabretooth back down through the drifts, the curved walls of the ice path sheltering them from the worst of the weather that wailed over their heads, Toad reminded Logan, in mocking asides, of all the reasons why Cyclops probably wouldn't be letting Logan catch him alone again any time soon – or sitting down when he had the option of standing. Logan mentally updated his To Do list to 'Kill Toad Slowly'.

By the time they reached the plane, Logan felt as if an eternity had passed and he was someone else. So, of course, was Scott. 

Who was upright in the X-Jet now, shoulders back, head up, even though he was wearing only a pair of leather boots and a blanket and he stank of Sabretooth's satisfaction, he was on his feet, in the open doorway, face still oddly exposed without his visor, but still standing tall and looking like the leader of the X-Men. Logan wanted to hug him tight, beg his forgiveness, and burst into tears – then kill a lot of people.

Toad tossed the end of Logan's chain to Scott, who caught it automatically, reflexes unimpaired by that full-body tremor that he was refusing to let segue into shock. Toad said, "Here you go, Pretty Boy. I guess I don't need to tell you not to let your animal go until you're airborne. I'm thinking he has a few issues with Sabretooth right now."

Which was when Sabretooth grabbed Logan by the front of his shredded, blood-stained uniform and slammed him hard against the sleek curving side of the X-Jet, gazing deep into his eyes as he popped every bony talon, held the claws next to Logan's face, and snarled out savagely, "Don't even think about touching him again." 

Logan closed his eyes, swallowed everything he wanted to say, reminded himself that they were in the looking-glass world today, and from somewhere down by his bootstraps dragged up a sneer. His careless shrug, though he said it himself, was masterful. "Like I told Magneto – I don't like sloppy seconds."

Sabretooth threw him into the X-Jet so that he whistled past Scott's ear, bounced off the wall, and crashed down, painfully, snapping a couple of ribs and dislocating his shoulder. He welcomed every lick of white-hot pain. Scott had dropped the chain but didn't even glance in his direction. From his place in a sea of physical and mental anguish on the floor, Logan watched Scott give Sabretooth a good attempt at a nod of farewell before he took a step back and forced himself not to slam his hand against the hatch button, but to walk, as evenly as he was able, to the pilot's seat, where he made himself sit down without wincing. Only then did he close the doors that shut Sabretooth out of the jet and the hell away from Scott Summers. Only then did his hands start to shake, and Logan watched Scott steady his breathing, wait for the tremor to pass, and then launch briskly into his pre-take-off routine.

They were airborne before Scott said, without looking around, "Realistically, how long do I need to give it before I set you free?"

Logan thought of how much he wanted to pop his claws, carve a hole in the X-Jet, throw himself straight at Sabretooth and rip out his throat with his teeth before disemboweling Toad. He said gruffly, "At least twenty minutes."

Scott gave a brief nod and then punched in the co-ordinates for home. Once they were through the worst of the snow, he engaged the autopilot and filled a syringe with his now apparently unmutated blood, dating and timing the sample with fingers that barely shook. Then he found himself some clothes, pulling them on very carefully while every ache in his body screamed so loudly that even Logan could hear it. Only then did he pick up the bolt cutters and crouch down by Logan so he could cut him out of his manacles. Carefully not making eye contact as he worked, he said, "Don't say you're sorry – you were right. It was the best way to handle him. Your strategy worked. We're alive. We're going home. We didn't even lose the jet."

Logan said, "I'm so fucking sorry…" unable to help it breaking through in his voice, how horrified he was by what had happened, how much he cared, and just how bad it had been. 

Absolutely the last thing that Scott needed – who was clearly doing his damnedest to keep his mind resolutely blank, and act as if this had been Just Another Mission. He faltered and for a second his face crumpled, but then he wrestled away the tears and the moment of weakness, and said calmly, "Sometimes things go bad on a mission. It happens. We learn from it. The important thing is that nobody died."

_No, the important thing is that you're not even a mutant any more; you're just an unusually good-looking human with some kickass self-defense moves. The important thing is that Sabretooth raped you. Twice. The important thing is that this is allmyfault._

He met Scott's gaze, and it was worse than he'd thought, because there was no anger and no blame, he just looked incredibly weary, and there was something in those beautiful blue eyes that looked a hundred years old as he touched Logan's shoulder gently and said, "Shit happens, Logan. Best just to let it go."

 

Unbound, Logan relieved his feelings by slamming his dislocated shoulder back into place as painfully as possible. His roar of anguish echoed off the walls off the X-Jet, a bellow of frustration and sorrow at all that he had failed to avert today.

There was a long silence before Scott, back in the pilot seat, said carefully, "Would it help at all to tell you that I couldn't have got through it without you?"

Snarling, Logan said, "You wouldn't have _had_ to get through it if it wasn't for me!"

"Logan, your memories go back fifteen years. Was there anything in any of those fifteen years that could honestly have tipped you off that having sex with me in a shower cubicle would make Sabretooth want to fuck me?" And because Scott didn't use words like 'fuck', it gave Logan a weird jolt to hear it. 

"He took my dogtags," he said.

"Oh yeah, that's exactly the same."

"I should have worked it out!"

"You had no data. And no reason to suppose that we would run into Magneto or any of his mutants today. It was bad luck and no one is to blame."

" _I'm_ to blame!"

"You know, the Professor runs a pretty good class on critical thinking – you might want to sit in sometime."

"I lied," Logan said abruptly. "I lied to myself, and then I lied to you, and then I lied to the Professor. All because I couldn't admit that Jean Grey isn't the only mutant that I like a lot more than I should. I punished you for making me give a damn about you – just like the Professor called it – and because I was a coward and a bully, you got hurt." _Because what I really wanted to do was kiss you on the mouth and tell you that I care about you, and if I'd done that instead of pretending it was just about sex, none of this would have happened_.

Scott gave a strangled snort of amusement, bitter and tired. "And you were the only guy in that shower cubicle who'd been sticking his head in the sand? I probably should have worked out exactly why I was finding you so annoying a little sooner than I did, too. We both failed to stock up at the Clue Store. It wasn't just you."

Brutally, Logan said, "But I wasn't the one who got fucked three times because of it."

There was a long silence in which Logan had time to wonder how often Scott Summers had longed to throw a wrench at his head, before Scott said, with quiet intensity, "Logan, I'm probably only going to say this once – because you really do annoy the crap out of me most days of the week – but there was never a moment today when I doubted, even for an instant, that if there was anything – at all – that you could do to save me from getting hurt, even if it involved you getting killed, that you would do it. Which isn't restful, by the way, but it does make a guy feel like he's got someone with him he can count on. Maybe that doesn't fix everything about what happened back in that cave, but I can tell you – it helps a lot."

They flew the rest of the way home in silence.

***

The forty-eight hour self-imposed quarantine for the three who had been investigating the booby-trapped device was their only break of the day. It meant that while Xavier, Jean, and Hank sat it out in the lab and Storm had her hands full teaching all their classes, Scott could land the jet without anyone being there to welcome him. Then Logan could sling an arm around him and help him limp past empty corridors of tasteful paneling to Logan's cramped but bathroom-adjacent quarters as rapidly as possible, in the hope of doing a patch-up job before anyone saw him.

"Are they in your head?" he asked Scott. "Jean and the Professor – do they know yet?"

"They know we're back but I told Jean I wasn't ready to talk about the mission. She said she'd tell the Professor to respect my privacy. She asked how you were."

Nonplussed, Logan said, "Why?"

"I tried to keep my mind blank but I guess that image slipped through – of what Sabretooth did to you. She understood that I needed time to deal."

"What Sabretooth did to _me_?" Logan didn't even try to hide his disbelief. "Yeah, because that's the worst thing that happened to you today – watching that."

Scott gave a strange little laugh. "You didn't see what it looked like, Logan."

Impatiently, Logan said, "You know I have the healing factor."

"That means you heal fast. It doesn't mean you don't feel pain. And it doesn't mean it doesn't look like a horror movie when it's happening in front of the rest of us. I could see your intestines for a while there."

"Were they pretty?"

"No. They were actually kind of gross." He flashed a look at Logan. "Can you help me…clean up? Check for…?"

Logan darted a glance at the bathroom, the white-tiled shower cubicle, pristine and surgical. "Are you sure you want me in there with you?"

"I don't want Jean to see. I don't want Hank to…" He grimaced. "You already know what happened."

Logan could see the guy was barely hanging on. He needed to transform himself back into at least a facsimile of Scott Summers, fast, but he was so spaced out with trauma and exhaustion that he couldn't see how it could be done. He needed someone to fix at least the outward signs of what had been done to him, to clean him up, and patch him up, and wash off the worst of it, preferably someone who wouldn't be shocked and wouldn't start weeping, and he was so bone-weary, bruised, and battered that he could barely put a foot in front of himself.

So, here they were, less than twenty-four hours after Logan had slammed Scott into a shower cubicle to do the nasty with him, both naked again, and back under the hot spray. Once again, Logan lifted the showerhead off the wall, but this time he tested the temperature of it against his hand and said quietly, "Anything I do that you don't want me doing – don't keep it to yourself."

Scott gave a brief, terse nod and braced himself against the tiles, closing his eyes as if not seeing anything but his own eyelids for a while would shut out all the bad memories as well. Logan directed the shower head where it would wash away the evidence, knowing that there probably wasn't enough soap in the world, but ready to keep doing whatever Scott wanted him to do to make himself feel clean.

And this was not the twisted intimacy he had been seeking – his soaped finger up inside Scott Summers, feeling gingerly for damage while Scott flinched and bore it. He knew Scott wouldn't want details, didn't need to hear: no impaction, no tearing, no bleeding, but, everything just so swollen and tender and bruised that it made Logan want to go back and slice Sabretooth's balls off with one slash of his claws. So, aloud he said, "You're okay…up there, you're just going to be sore for a little while," and Scott gave one of his brief leader nods, like they were discussing strategy, and then it was back to touching every inch of the guy he'd been too uptight to caress the night before. Logan spraying warm water inside him to wash away every trace of Sabretooth's unholy fluids, more soap and then more spray, rinse and repeat, until Scott gave another nod, and Logan moved on, washing the rest of him, lemon-scented suds over all those claw scratches and bruises and fingermarks, the hair Sabretooth had touched, and the neck he'd licked, and the spot where Scott could still feel that pressing heat laving between his shoulder blades. Logan knew every place where Sabretooth's mouth or tongue or cock or come or probing fingers or bruising fists had touched, because he'd seen every endless minute of it, and he guessed this was all he had to offer for penance – silent attendance to all of those besmirched places, knowing that washing them once or twice or even three times wouldn't be enough to make them feel clean. So, he worked the shampoo in and rinsed it out four times, doing Scott's ears at the same time, remembering the way Sabretooth's tongue had licked at his lobes. And he washed his limp, abused cock, and his cruelly fondled balls, and all the places around his ass crack and thighs where Sabretooth had spurted on him hotly, and all Scott had to do was hang on and stay more or less upright. Under the circumstances, Logan figured that staying upright was more than enough to ask.

When Logan had washed and rinsed every part of him until they were fogged and slicked together in a world of warm steam, and the smell of soap was so strong it was making his eyes water, he looped Scott's arm around his shoulders, and the guy let Logan take his weight, without a word of protest, and let Logan help him limp, slowly and painfully, back to the bedroom. Scott knelt on the bed, dripping wet, without needing to be told about necessary access points, while Logan dried him carefully, blotting his body with towels and sniffing him carefully to check that no odor of Sabretooth remained. Then Logan applied anti-inflammatory pain-killing gel, inside and out, and put Neosporin on the long scratches that Sabretooth's claws had left all over his sides and flanks, across his hollow belly, and in raking reminders where he had gripped him by the hips. He bandaged his torn wrists and the hand that had got so badly scraped against the rocks when Sabretooth was thrusting. He helped to ease him over carefully and found him a way to sit that didn't hurt too badly. He tended to his bruised cheekbone, and bandaged his bruised ribs, and winced at the red wheals on his throat where Sabretooth had grabbed him by the throat and half-choked him. 

He found him some sweats to sleep in and to cover up the worst of it so they wouldn't frighten the children if Kitty sleepwalked through a wall, and helped him to wince and teethgrit his way into them with every muscle wailing. Then he pulled on some clothes himself so Scott didn't have to deal with any more naked male flesh in too close proximity, and sat carefully on the bed beside him. Only then did he touch the ugly contusion on his jaw with regretful fingers and point out that shaving was going to hurt for a few days.

Scott said, "Tell me anything that _isn't_ going to hurt for a few days."

Logan ran through a mental list of: standing, sitting, walking, lying down, talking, swallowing, and said, "Well, the cut on your mouth's not too bad. You may be able to kiss someone. Not that I imagine –"

Which was when Scott leaned forward and kissed him, very gently, with his eyes closed and his face painfully unguarded, those black lashes looking an inch long against the bruised shadows under his eyes, and Logan didn't think he'd ever been religious, although, of course, he couldn't be sure, but he knew a kiss of absolution when he felt it, all the same. He closed his eyes as the hot, unfamiliar tears spurted, and gave Scott back a kiss of regret, and they stayed like that with their foreheads touching, breathing in synch, slow and shuddering, while Logan reached up gently and with careful fingers tried to tidy the squeaky-clean, lemon-scented tangle of Scott Summer's wet hair.

 

It was Logan who helped him to lie on his least battered side when he got too tired even to sit upright but it was Scott who pulled Logan down onto the bed next to him so they lay there like mirror images barely a nose apart. 

Logan swallowed. "The last thing you want right now is a hairy mutant in your bed."

"It's your bed, and there are hairy mutants and hairy mutants. But just so you know, if anyone – at all – tries to put his dick in my ass for…a year, I'll kill him, probably by a method combining paper-cuts and lemon juice with a blunt hacksaw."

"I wasn't gonna –"

"I know. I'm just saying that I wouldn't advise trying to date me for a while. I know your dick would probably grow back again, even if I cut it off, but do you have empirical proof it would reach the same size?"

He was aghast. He hadn't even known what that was until now, but now he got it, and this – was definitely aghast. "Scott, I wouldn't even think about –"

"Not today, no, or next week, or the month after that. But at some point, one or the other of us is probably going to want to do something stupid all over again so I'm just laying down a few ground rules now."

"Given that there's every chance that Jean is going to kill me with her brain five minutes after she's out of quarantine, I'd save your breath."

Scott said, "Jean may take it better than you think."

"Get real, kid. I didn't just lick the frosting off her cupcake, I borrowed her boyfriend without her permission and then I let him get broken. She's going to maim me at the very least."

"I'm not broken," Scott said fiercely.

Logan gazed into a blaze of blue. "Okay."

"He didn't break me."

Logan said carefully, "Scott, we don't know if the effect of that lab stuff is temporary or –"

"It is."

"You don't know that."

"I'm a mutant and there is no way on any planet to make me anything other than a mutant, not permanently. This is who I am." He gazed intently into Logan's eyes. "I'm still me."

Logan gazed right back. "I don't know what you are. I'm not sure I ever did." 

"Well, whatever I am, it's the same thing I was yesterday, and the same thing I'm going to be tomorrow. Sabretooth doesn't get to change that." 

"Stubborn little fucker, aren't you?" Logan said conversationally, not sure how they'd ended up face to face under the covers, whispering, like two kids having a sleepover.

"Less of the 'little', shortass. I'll always be taller than you."

"And I'll always be older and stronger and meaner and uglier."

And it was strange how he could watch every emotion chase itself across Scott Summer's face now that the visor was – temporarily – absent. That was disagreement, pained disagreement. "You're not ugly. Given the way you're always sniffing round my girlfriend, you're annoyingly handsome." Scott reached out with his bandaged hand and touched Logan's face, and his touch was much softer and more curious than Logan would have expected. "You have beautiful eyes. I'll miss seeing them properly when my powers come back."

And he said it with such conviction that Logan found himself tugged towards belief – that what Worthington labs had whipped up in that test-tube and Mystique had stolen was indeed still too unstable a compound to cause any permanent change, and that perhaps, after all, Wolverine wasn't ugly all the way through.

Aloud though, he just said, "Not seeing so well without your glasses, eh, Bub?"

Scott pointed at his eyes. "20/20 with or without force beams. Thanks for the first aid."

"I'd say you're welcome but that was one time I really didn't enjoy fondling your ass. Scott – are you going to be okay?"

Scott gazed back at him, unblinkingly, for a long moment and then said, "I don't know. I don't know how this works – you and me, me and Jean, now I've cheated on her, what you and I did, what Sabretooth did to me. Right now it feels like the only thing I really recognize is…you. And, frankly, Logan, you're kind of a dick." 

"You're going to have to let them in – Jean and the Professor and Hank and Storm. You need to let them help you."

"I will, I always meant to – I just didn't want them to get the…."

The first raw, soul-bruised, mind-wrenched trauma of it. Logan got that. That a guy would want to protect the telepathic woman that he loved from having to experience the first shock of what rape felt like. Didn't want Jean getting the psychic overspill of horror flashbacks to a hairy weight pressing down and thrusting in, biting and mouthing, stretching and bruising, and that grunt-grunt-grunt in her ear. 

"I don't ever want her to have to feel what that was like. I just need a day or two to get my thoughts back under control –"

Logan reached across and put his hands on his shoulders. "No."

"What?"

"No, that's not what happens next. This isn't an exercise in you protecting everyone else from what was done to you, you dumb little shit."

"Less of the 'little', clawguy."

"I'm serious. Xavier, Hank, Storm, and Jean are all older and smarter than you are, dumbass, and they don't want to be protected from your pain. They want to know the worst so they can help you."

Scott looked stricken. "I just want to keep everyone safe."

"Well, you can't," Logan said brutally. "The kindest thing you can do for the people you care about right now, is to let them help you, and that means letting them know what went down out there and giving yourself permission to be screwed up by it for a while. You're going to need time to heal. We all are."

Scott nestled into the pillow more comfortably, eyelashes ridiculously long for a guy. On any other day but this, Logan would have had to mock him for them. Scott said, "You're sounding strangely like someone who cares, Logan."

"I am someone who cares," he growled.

"You're kind of sounding like an X-Man, too."

"I am an X-Man."

"Isn't that going to put a crimp in your bike-stealing-sexy-loner-who-doesn't-give-a-shit persona?"

"No, it's going to blow it to hell, and don't think I won't be blaming you for that, loudly and often." He was trapped in that damned blue searchlight again and his heart turned over as he got all the flashbacks that Scott was so desperate to keep from Jean. He suspected he was going to be seeing those scenes for a long time. He reached out and stroked his damp hair back from his forehead. "I always did care. That was what scared me. I'm sorry I took that out on you the way I did."

"I'm sorry you got your guts ripped out trying to defend my honor."

"You're still harping on about that?"

Scott shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? That I'd go through that shit with Sabretooth a dozen times not to see that done to you again."

"Well, I'd take having my guts ripped out every time over having to watch you get raped, because I can tell you, lost memories or not, I _know_ that is the worst thing I have ever had to live through."

"I doubt that, Logan," said Scott sadly. "I think we both of us have reason to be grateful that we've forgotten half the things that ever happened to us."

"Damn it – I think Magneto may have had a point about that Misfit Toys thing."

Scott said, with unaccustomed warmth, "Magneto can go screw himself with a rusty wrench."

Logan saw the brief blinding flash of Scott's rage and hurt and disbelief that anyone could let that be done to him, for no reason, when Magneto could have stopped it with a word, and was almost relieved to see that the jagged open scar of it wasn't being scabbed over too quickly. Some wounds actually needed to weep a little in the open air. 

He said, "How about if in a week or so, when you're stronger, we reprogram the Danger Room so we get to kill Magneto, Sabretooth, and Toad – over and over and over again?"

Scott lifted his bandaged hand and it was so unlike him that it took Logan a minute to realize he was going for a high-five. He touched his hand gently, afraid of hurting it worse, and instead of slapping palms they ended with an awkward curling together of fingers. It felt oddly right to be holding hands with Scott Summers, like they were high school kids contemplating their first prom.

He said, "I owe you a corsage."

"You don't owe me a damn thing." Scott's voice was hoarse with emotion – and probably from having had his throat squeezed by Sabretooth – but there was that bright warning flash of conviction, also. 

Quite gently, Logan said, "I think we might have to agree to disagree on that one, Scott."

 

Logan knew there were going to be nightmares, and poor Jean was probably going to bear the brunt of it. She was going to have to deal with not just the waking up sweating or punching, fight or flight reflexes engaged, and the unaccountable rages, and the mood swings, and the all kinds of damage it was probably going to do to their sex-life that her boyfriend had been raped by Sabretooth, but she was going to get hit with the brain bleed, too. He doubted it was even possible for any psychic to be in a room with Scott Summers right now and not have Sabretooth leering and smearing at the corner of his or her mind. He didn't envy Jean or Xavier that. And he could be there, so that when Scott wanted to punch a wall, he punched Logan instead – which would do less damage to Scott's fists. He fully intended to be there, if Jean would let him. He could be the person Scott raged at and in whose arms he wept, if he had any weeping still to come, and Jean's mind could take a break. And he really hoped that Jean would see things the way he did – after she stopped wanting to kill him – that Scott Summers – and all his new trauma – was something that she and Logan could share. 

Whatever Scott said about not being property, it would probably come down to what Jean was or wasn't willing to permit, but Logan thought that he could help, just because he'd been there, and he thought Jean would agree, and would be willing to share Scott with him, for Scott's sake as well as Logan's, because she was a better person than probably either of them deserved, and she really did love Scott. So, until Jean told him differently – told him hand's off or back off – and he really didn't think she would – he was going to think of Scott as a damaged mutant shared. So, until she got out of quarantine, this was his shift. It was his job to watch over Scott while he slept and to be there if he woke up screaming, and to tell him that all that crap had happened but it wasn't happening now – that he was safe now. 

Wearily, lashes fluttering as he fought to stay awake, Scott said, "What is it you think you owe me, Logan?"

Logan thought about all the impulses that he'd repressed the night before. "Dinner. Maybe a show, too, but definitely dinner."

Scott blinked. "You think you owe me…a date?"

"I owe you three dates. Everyone knows good boys don't put out until the third date – and you're a very good boy. I've seen your school reports. So, I owe you at least dinner."

"You can buy me a restaurant, I'm still not having sex with anyone for a very long time."

"What I owed you was to tell you that I liked you and to ask you if you'd maybe like to see a movie sometime? What I owed you was a moonlight boat trip and a good bottle of wine and some sparkling conversation and a kiss."

"You do sparkling conversation?" Despite the bruises and the bandages, Scott looked downright amused.

"I owed you romance."

Scott said, "Romance? Really, Logan? You honestly think you can compete with a smooth operator like Sabretooth?"

Logan looked at him in disbelief as the horror flashes jumped in his brain. "Don't joke about it."

"Do you know that every time I say his name you get that kind of crazed serial killer look in your eye. Like you have to lock down every muscle to stop the claws coming out?"

As locking down every muscle to stop the claws coming out was exactly what Logan was doing, he glowered at him. "And you _don't_ want to kill him?"

"Of course I do. But I also think he's damaged beyond repair. Way more damaged than you or me. Maybe he was even born that way. Oh, and I'm sorry I told the bad guys that you were a rapist. You do know you're not, right?"

It was odd how steady Scott's gaze was. 

"I know," Logan said a beat too fast.

"You've been going back over it in your head thinking: He never actually said 'yes', because why not torture yourself about something you didn't do…?"

"You didn't say 'yes'. And I didn't ask."

"And now you think you and Victor Creed are brothers in arms?"

"Why not? That guy didn't even know he was raping you. He thought you liked all the selfish, painful, invasive things he did to you. He thought you were goddamn soulmates."

Scott tilted his head so Logan could see his bruised cheekbone, his cut mouth, his neck with the red wheals left by Sabretooth's fingers. He silently lifted the sweatshirt so Logan could look at the cuts and bruises, the countless lacerations from Sabretooth's claws, then held up his bandaged hand. "Yeah, I looked just like this when you were done with me. Logan – get real – I can – could – fire force beams out of my eyes. Also, when my hands aren't tied behind my back and I don't have a stupidly self-sacrificing mutant friend to look out for, I'm shit hot at self defense, so, if I hadn't wanted you to do what you did, last night, you would have known because I would have put my fist through your face. That doesn't mean, however, that every time I put my fist through your face that you have done something wrong. It doesn't even mean that if I mistake you for Sabretooth that it's because you're anything like him."

So Scott had worked out that there were probably violent nightmares and even more violent awakenings from those nightmares in his future, too. Scott, Logan was only now realizing, after the day's events, was much smarter than he had ever given him credit for.

"You're not as dumb as you look," he said.

Scott said, "Well, you are, apparently. Jean's not going to kill you."

"Why not?"

"Because, quite apart from her liking you rather more than I'm comfortable with as her boyfriend –"

"Her cheating boyfriend," Logan reminded him, as they were being this way.

"Quite apart from that – Jean loves me, and she knows me, like no one else ever has or probably ever will. So, she knows how I feel about you, and she won't send you away when I need you."

Logan found himself back to being hypnotized by those impossibly blue eyes while Scott let the mask slip just enough for Logan to see that he was putting up the bravest front he could, but he was scared to close his eyes, scared to fall sleep, and his mind was a churning mill race, right now, seething with outward anger and inward loathing. That he was having to hold himself still just to stop his fists from flying or the tears from falling or from just straight out ripping open down every seam. 

Logan said, "Scott, if you need me, I'm here. I'm here in the school, or I'm here in the room, or I'm here in the bed. You need a punching bag – I'm here. You need a shoulder to cry on – I'm here. You need to hear that your powers are going to come back and everything, in the end, is going to be okay – I'm here."

"I need all of that and more."

"Then you can have all of that and more." Logan touched his shoulder the way he'd wanted to touch it when Magneto was injecting him with that mutant-power-stealing potion, a gentle pressure, support that he could feel as well as see, and a long, steady look into his eyes with nothing hidden, including that Logan knew very well that the road ahead was rocky but that they were going to take it together, one step at a time. "Now, get some sleep. While you're asleep, I'm going to tell Jean what happened out there, so you don't have to."

"Don't tell her like it was your fault."

"I'm going to tell her my own way and in my own words and there's not a damn thing you can do about it, so suck it up now, sonny."

Scott shook his head, eyes closing as he said, sleepily, "My God, you're a dick. Every time I think you can't actually be more of a dick you still manage to outdick yourself."

"It's a gift." 

Logan covered him up with the comforter much too tenderly, and then bent and kissed him on the forehead. Scott's bandaged hand shot out, fingers protruding from the white edges, pinkly clean, and closed in his sweats, tugging him closer and holding him there so Scott could take a few deep inhalations of his scent. His heartbeat steadied at the smell of soap and presumably something that he recognized as Logan. He tugged Logan down, still holding him, and Logan obligingly wriggled closer, so Scott could keep that death-grip on his clothing. He wrapped his own hand around the back of Scott's to cushion it, running his thumb very lightly over the bandage, and said, steadily, "Go to sleep. I'm not going anywhere."

"If Jean's going to stay here, too, we're going to need a bigger bed," Scott murmured drowsily, and then finally, his battered body and even more battered mind finally let go and he drifted into a salving sleep.

Logan blinked in mild surprise and then wondered if that might have to be how it was for a while, Scott needing both of them too much for them to dance around their buried desires or resentments. He suspected that there were as yet undreamed of complications still ahead of them. He suspected that by the time they were even halfway through this, they were all going to know way too much about each other, and would be either hating or loving one another far too much…. 

He glanced back at Scott's sleeping face, the hand still clinging to Logan's clothing, even now, and guessed that it was going to be love that happened, then, sharp-edged and painful and occasionally uncomfortable or even downright inconvenient, but inescapable, all the same. They had done to him what Rogue had done to him far too easily. What had happened to the other X-Men had happened to him, and now he was doomed to love them. They had robbed him of the right to loneliness and the gift of unwanted silence and they had fissured and wounded and weakened him with love. And they had bonded with his bones like metal, and they had made him stronger.

Moving very carefully so as not to dislodge the grip of his fingers, Logan laid his head down on the pillow opposite Scott Summers, and watched him sleeping; inexpressibly comforted by the rhythm of his breaths and the steady, soothing beat of his heart.

##### The End


End file.
